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DENYS THE DREAMER 


DENYS 

THE DREAMER 


A NOVEL 

BY 

KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON 



New York, Cincinnati, Chicago 

BENZIGER BROTHERS 

Publishers op Benziger’s Magazine 
1925 



Copyright, 1921, by Benziger Brothers 


*9 ,921 


©CI.A614922 


a 

tr 


r- 

02 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Denys Is Dreaming ..... 7 

II The New Agent . . . . 17 

III Mrs. Aarons ...... 26 

IV The Other Man ..... 35 

V At the Opera 44 

VI Coming Home 53 

VII The Auction 62 

VIII The Expert 73 

IX The Other Side 82 

X Denys Renders an Account . . 91 

XI The “Princess’’ 100 

XII A Castle in Air Falls Down . . 109 

XIII Boy’s Love 118 

XIV A Light Man ...... 126 

XV Lovers’ Way ...... 134 


CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

XVI The Dowager Arrives . . . . 144 

XVII “Summer- — But Where’s the Rose?” 1 53 
XVIII Denys Hears the News . . . 16 1 

XIX The Way of a Woman . . . 170 

XX The Ancient Enemy . . . . 178 

XXI Trouble Brewing 188 

XXII Calamity 197 

XXIII Other People’s Troubles . . . 205 

XXIV The Benefactor 213 

XXV Nurse Malone 223 

XXVI Quarantine 231 

XXVII “Oh, Is It You My Own Love?” . 237 

XXVIII A Last Parting 246 

XXIX Dawn Gives Comfort . 253 


DENYS THE DREAMER 

CHAPTER I 

DENYS IS DREAMING 

D enys Fitzmaurice of Murrough sat on the 
edge of the bog looking away to where the 
river ran through purple and gold of heather and 
ragwort, widening white under the rays of light that 
shot down from behind an immense cloud. It was 
a scene very well worth looking upon. Far away 
the blue line of mountains showed dimly fair, with 
a promise of fine weather. There was a great sky 
stretching over the wide land, overarching it, with 
a sense of immensity and light. At the boy’s feet 
the grey green of the rushes was relieved by the pale 
aromatic blobs of meadow-sweet and the white of 
the bog-cotton that stirred in the faint, light breeze. 

The bog was intersected by stretches of cultivated 
land. Across the Little Bog at Denys Fitzmaurice’s 
feet he could see, grazing the little fields, his father’s 
cattle, as well as other things that were not there. 
All sorts of strange bird-songs and calls came to 
him, for the bog harbored every variety of bird. 
His sleepy grey eyes carried an immense distance. 
If it had not been for the haze of heat he might have 
seen the eagle poised motionless against the great 
sky over Nephin. 

His hand caressed the silken head of Rory, his 
red setter, who lay as near to him on the sunny bank 
as might be. He took up one soft, feathered ear and 
let it drop through his fingers. Rory would have 
liked better to go over the bog, racing and running 
before his master till he was called to heel; but he 
knew his master’s moods and that this was a time 
for silence. If a dog was tired and content to be 
7 


8 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


still — they had been many miles over the bog that 
morning — there could be nothing better than to lie 
on a sunny bank half-asleep and to have his ear 
played with gently by the hand he loved best in the 
world. 

Denys was half asleep with his dreams, or perhaps 
only dazed by the shimmering haze over the bog — 
it was very hot — when he became aware of voices 
close at hand. For some reason, even before he 
looked in the direction of the voices, he was vaguely 
annoyed because the dried mud of a bog hole, into 
which he had slipped earlier, was plastered on his 
boots and clothing. He glanced shyly over his 
shoulder, then stumbled to his feet. The new- 
comers were three: his father, Lord Leenane and 
Dawn Finucane, Lord Leenane’s sixteen-year-old 
daughter. 

Denys lifted his hat, blushing all over his clear, 
freckled skin. He had not forgotten to be a gentle- 
man even if the Fitzmaurices were come down in 
the world. His eyes, grey, lightly dappled with 
hazel, seemed as though they had been freckled too. 
His long dark lashes, with the upward curling sweep 
at the end, gave his eyes a great, softness. His 
father had said they could be as hard as agates when 
Denys was bent on going his own way, but usually 
they were full of dreams. He was tall and straight. 
Even though his shabby homespuns were plastered 
with mud and stained by the wind and weather, he 
looked a gentleman. 

The girl, with a green velvet cap on her fair hair, 
which hung down in a pigtail over her emerald-green 
frock, looked at him with interest in her blue eyes. 
She had not many companions of her own age, since 
her only brother had been drowned in an accident 
on the ice three years earlier, and her father, as 
though the loss of the boy had frightened him, would 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


9 


hardly let Dawn out of his sight, so that she missed 
school and the companionship of children of her 
own age. Her aunt, Mrs. Metcalfe, who had lived 
at Castle Clogher and kept house for her widowed 
brother since her own widowhood, had been heard 
to say plaintively that Turlough’s daughter must 
eventually be an old maid, since her father would 
never allow her to leave him; or else he must find 
a son-in-law who would sit down by his hearth. 
Little Dawn did not seem to find her father’s pro- 
hibitions irksome. They were always together, rid- 
ing and hunting, walking and fishing. Dawn, in her 
green frock, with one little hand thrust carelessly 
through her father’s arm, was a very pleasant sight. 

It was the first time Denys Fitzmaurice had seen 
Lord Leenane’s daughter. Castle Clogher was five 
miles away with the Lakes between, and Denys was 
one for staying at home. Lord Leenane he had seen 
several times when he came to buy horses from 
Denys’s father, Patrick Fitzmaurice, who had come 
down in the world, and been reduced to making a 
living as best he could. The best way he knew, 
beyond his farming, was to breed horses. His 
horses, which he sold for a song had often been 
lucky with their new owners. It was his pride to 
say that he had bred a winner of the Irish Oaks, 
the Irish Derby, and, — crowning splendor — the 
Grand National. But he had not sold with judg- 
ment. He was fond of saying that if the skies rained 
gold not one coin would fall into the lap of a Fitz- 
maurice. 

“Hello !” said Leenane, in a loud jolly voice. He 
had been the jolliest man in the West before his 
son’s death, and he still kept a manner of jollity, 
although people said the heat had gone out of it as 
the color went out of his face when the news came 


10 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


that Maurice was drowned and had never altogether 
returned to it. 

“Hello!” he said to Denys, who was blinking in 
the sun or the radiance of Dawn’s face and hair. 
“The last time I saw you, you were sitting on the 
sunny side of the ditch, just as you are sitting to-day. 
Did you ever move out of it since?” 

Denys blushed, for the straight regard of Dawn’s 
serious eyes rather than for Lord Leenane’s jocosity. 

“I did, now and again,” he said sheepishly. 

“He’s very good with the horses,” his father said 
apologetically. “And he has an eye for a bullock. 
But it’s true that he idles a great deal. His school- 
master, Peter Reddy, used to say that he could get 
him to do only what he wanted to do. ‘Buy him a 
penny whistle,’ he said, ‘and let him play tunes on it 
all day long like a fairy piper. He’ll never get into 
Sixth Book,’ he said.” 

“He mustn’t grow up a dreamer and idler,” said 
Leenane, and suddenly choked. He was remember- 
ing all the promise of his own boy who had been a 
Winchester scholar and had great things prophesied 
of his future. Leenane never knew how his son 
came to be so brilliant. He himself had not been 
one for books and had managed to get along very 
well without them. He used sometimes to produce 
a bundle of his Eton birches, dusty and tied up with 
faded blue ribbon, to show what a dunce he had been. 
But Maurice had taken after his mother’s family 
and bade fair to be a brilliant classical scholar. The 
sight of Denys Fitzmaurice, shapely and beautiful 
in his rough clothes, had reminded Leenane sharply 
of his loss. A pity the boy had had no better chance 
than the National School. Leenane had a vague 
wish that he might have done something for this 
boy, for Maurice’s sake, but it was too late now; 
and perhaps Fitzmaurice would not have taken a 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


ii 


favor. The Fitzmaurices were gentlefolk even if 
they had come down in the world. One had only to 
look at the boy to see it. And his name, Denys, 
stood in proof of his Norman ancestry and that 
the Fitzmaurices had not forgotten it He had a 
certain compunction for the color that surged into 
Denys’ face and ebbed away when his idleness was 
talked of. He put his grief from him impatiently. 
When would he cease to feel the stab through his 
heart that came at the sight of other boys alive and 
beautiful, while his lay dead and moldering in earth? 

“What were you thinking of when we came up 
behind you?” he asked in a gentler voice. “You 
were lost in your thoughts. Never mind about the 
Sixth Book. Many a one has done well in the world 
without too much book learning. A penny for your 
thoughts, boy.” 

“I was thinking about draining the bog, the Little 
Bog, I mean. I saw cattle grazing there and houses 
and people. If the river was to be widened and 
trenches cut the water would run away. This bit is 
more marsh than bog. The bog begins at the little 
trees out there with their feet in the water.” 

Leenane stared. 

“I don’t agree with Mr. Reddy,” he said, turning 
to Patrick Fitzmaurice. “The boy’s dreams are fine 
dreams, dreams of doing. Let us see if he can drain 
the bog. Do you hear, Dawn? Denys Fitzmaurice 
thinks he can drain the bog and bring the cattle and 
the houses and the people. Isn’t it a fine dream?” 

“I should like to see him do it,” said Dawn. 
“Would the flowers go then and the bog-cotton and 
the little blue butterflies like bits of sky? The bog 
is a lovely place.” 

“There’ll be plenty of it left,” said Leenane. 
“This would be a nice strip if only it was reclaimed, 


12 DENYS IS DREAMING 

— as far as the little trees with their feet in the 
water.” 

“Oh, yes, please, do make a field of this little bit,” 
cried Dawn. 

“I’ll try to,” said Denys, very straight, and his 
eyes like agates. 

Then they went to see the horses. There was a 
beautiful one to see, a two-year-old filly that would 
make a lovely mount for Dawn a little later, but she 
was as yet unbroken. 

“Not that she needs breaking,” said Denys, with 
the filly’s silken nose pressed hard into his breast. 
“She has a little mouth like satin, and there was 
never as sweet a temper. Only she’s a terrible pet. 
She’d walk up the walls of the loose-box to follow 
me, and many’s the time I’ve had to take my tea in 
the box 'with her when she couldn’t have Timmie 
Daly that she likes second best to me.” 

“Do you hear that, Dawn?” Lord Leenane asked 
again. “You’ll have to take your tea in this lady’s 
loose-box unless you can find her a groom she will 
like nearly as well as you.” 

“I should love to have tea with her,” said Dawn. 
“It would be much nicer than tea in a drawing-room 
with silly ladies talking about clothes and servants.” 

Lord Leenane and his household were moving 
away for the winter. Lady, as the little filly was 
called, was bought, but to Denys Fitzmaurice’s great 
relief, left at Murrough till they came back, — he 
could never bear parting with the horses — and they 
were not to return till the following spring, so Lady 
would be his for a long time yet — but the winter 
passed quickly, for Denys was very busy. 

Dawn and her father and Mrs. Metcalfe had win- 
tered at Rome and returned home in the early part 
of May. The eight months had made a great 
change in Dawn. She was no longer a child. Her 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


i3 


little figure had rounded and taken shape. She was 
going to miss the awkward age of girlhood. She 
had sprung up and had a delicate slenderness. She 
had a long beautiful neck that carried her little head 
in very stately fashion. 

“Dawn is going to be very pretty,” Mrs. Metcalfe 
had said to Lord Leenane. “You will have to find 
her a husband who will sit down in your house with 
your girl, Turlough.” 

“It will be time enough to talk about such things 
ten years hence,” said Leenane huffily. 

They were not long home before Leenane and 
Dawn rode across the hills to where Murrough 
Farm sat under the lee of a green hill. It was a 
delightful little house, long, low, and white, with 
all manner of quaintness in its dim little rooms. 
They had called it “Murrough” from the old ruined 
castle of the Fitzmaurice’s, roofless now, and a place 
of four square walls with a few fine window-spaces 
to show what it had been, and a winding staircase 
that led from one tiny room to another. Sheep had 
grazed between the four walls of the tower before 
Stephen Fitzmaurice, Denys’s grandfather, had en- 
closed it. 

Half way down the hillside, Leenane pulled up 
so suddenly that the mare he was riding almost 
backed into Dawn’s little horse following, causing 
him to jump about a little, but not with the least 
intention of unseating his young mistress. He, too, 
had been bred at Murrough Farm, and although he 
had accepted Dawn with his whole heart as the one 
to whom he owed devotion, he had yet been showing 
a lively interest, sniffing the air and whinnying from 
the time he began to ascend by the long leisurely 
road that climbed to the gap from the lakes. 

“Hello!” Leenane said and pointed excitedly with 
his whip. “Do you see that, Dawn?” 


14 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


Dawn looked, having got the little horse under 
control. She saw nothing unusual for a moment or 
two. There was the thatched roof, neatly wattled- 
over in a criss-cross pattern. There was the garden 
around the house deepened with color at this dis- 
tance and the little fields with the moving dots of the 
sheep and cattle. There was the row of little trees 
with their feet in the water and the whispering 
wood beyond. 

“What is it, Papa?” she asked; and then she saw. 
On the near side of the row of trees that stood with 
their feet in the water, blobs of creamy white were 
moving about on an emerald pasture, — sheep. 

“By Heavens!” said Leenane. “The boy has 
drained the bog. I never thought he could do it. 
I thought he was only dreaming when he talked of 
such a thing. Better than a penny whistle, — eh, 
Dawn? and there is the man himself.” 

They cantered down the hillside to Murrough. 
It was true that Denys had drained the bit of bog, 
by hard manual labor, by making trenches with the 
spade, deepening and widening the channels that 
already existed, so that the water could escape. He 
looked browner and harder than when he had 
dreamed on the side of the ditch in the late summer 
weather, playing with Rory’s silken ears, but his 
eyes had still the quietness of dreams in them. 

Patrick Fitzmaurice stood by, while his son was 
praised by Lord Leenane, wearing a well-pleased 
but not over-pleased air. 

“I always knew it was in him,” he said. “It was 
great impudence for that Reddy to say Denys was 
only good for playing a penny whistle. Give me an 
old pedagogue for impudence. Time was, he’d have 
come hat in hand to a Fitzmaurice of Murrough. 
We were protecting him and his likes in the old days, 
before we were brought down by reason of the re* 
ligion. I was never sorry for it.” 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


i S 


“While my ancestor made the best of this world, 
lest there should be no other,” said Leenane, with 
a wheezy chuckle. “Well, well, I’m not sorry he 
did. Castle Clogher was worth a few old prayers, 
as he said. But this boy of yours, Fitzmaurice of 
Murrough — he should have a chance — a boy of his 
breeding. It was rotten luck he should have gone 
to the National School with the sons of peasants. 
Not that it has hurt him. I read somewhere the 
other day that Sir William Napier, the historian, 
and his brother, went to the village school. They 
had the blood of kings. I daresay many a fine fellow 
did the same. I expect you can do your sums, Denys, 
more than I can after five years at Eton. How old 
is he, Fitzmaurice?” 

“Seventeen.” 

“Time enough to do something with him. I’ll 
see to it. Not such schooling as will wean him away 
from this — your one son.” 

He waved his hand round the low room, lit dimly 
by four little windows of eight panes set deeply in 
the thick walls. Roses and honeysuckle looked in 
at the window in full summer. Now there was yel- 
low jessamine and the hardy Scotch roses. A little 
gravel path ran round the house, under the windows, 
and the thatch above was tunnelled with the nests of 
starlings and house-martins. The house sat in a 
garden, a lovable garden of mixed fruit and vege- 
tables, with flower-borders within the box. 

The room was very pleasant although littered 
with the belongings of two male persons. They 
were not ugly belongings, tall Dawn reflected, re- 
membering with a fastidious inward shudder of a 
visit she had paid to an English farmhouse where 
the greasy collar and tie of the farmer had lain on 
the window-seat among the roses and honeysuckle. 
Books, pipes, fishing tackle, a couple of bits polished 
to brightness, a penknife, a lantern, had intruded 


1 6 


DENYS IS DREAMING 


into the room which Denys’s mother had called the 
parlor. Her china still gleamed out of diamond- 
paned cupboards on either side of the fireplace. The 
furniture was old and good. There were a couple 
of portraits on the longest stretch of wall. A needle- 
work picture of “Daniel in the Lions’ Den” at- 
tracted Dawn by the glitter of the Lions’ yellow eyes 
which were in bead-work. There was a little book- 
case with a green silk curtain half drawn over the 
contents. The carpet and curtains were faded but 
still good. 

A delightful room, Dawn thought it, with the 
wood-fire talking to itself through its spurts of 
flame and Rory lying on his side on the hearth-rug. 

Her father was discussing his plans for Denys’s 
schooling. He had an old friend in Norfolk who 
had given up an Oxford Fellowship for a quiet coun- 
try rectory. Pollock would be delighted to get a 
boy like Denys to coach. After a year with Pollock 
Denys could go to school. He named a public 
school which had arrived at the democratic spirit. 
Leenane knew the Headmaster, a crank politically, 
but a good Headmaster and a sound scholar. 

“It will be hard on you,” he said with a hand on 
Patrick Fitzmaurice’s shoulder. “I know what it will 
cost you — your one boy. But it is worth it ; and he 
will come back.” 

He turned away his head. Dawn Finucane was 
delighted with her father’s plan for Denys, of whom 
she thought as “a very nice boy.” She smiled at 
Denys and he blinked as though he had looked into 
the sun and was half blinded by it, while the color 
flooded his candid face. So Dawn Finucane took 
possession of Denys Fitzmaurice’s heart. 


CHAPTER II 

THE NEW AGENT 

Y ) enys Fitzmaukice at twenty-three had abund- 
antly justified Lord Leenane’s interest in him. 
He had done well at school after his year with Mr. 
Pollock. His education had cost very little. He 
had taken many scholarships and prizes and had 
finally won a travelling studentship for three years 
at a Continental University. 

As he stood up with his back to the fire, looking 
down the long drawing-room of Castle Clogher, be- 
tween the glittering lines of the chandeliers, he was 
a very goodly youth to look upon. So thought Lord 
Leenane, coming towards him with an outstretched 
hand and a hearty welcome on his lips. Not so 
often nor so sharply now did the thought of his 
dead son stab him; yet there was something of a 
film on his eyes as he looked at the tall young figure 
with its air of distinction. 

“I have been telling Mr. Fitzmaurice that we are 
most unpunctual people in this house, Turlough,” 
said Mrs. Metcalfe, who was sitting by the fire, her 
quick knitting-needles catching the sparkle of the 
drops of the chandeliers as they flew to and fro. 
“Even dinner is a movable feast with us.” 

“Oh, Denys won’t mind. I daresay he’s very 
glad to get back to Irish ways,” Leenane said, wring- 
ing Denys’s hand hard. The film was clearing off. 
After all, he did not grudge the boy his health and 
good looks, because Maurice had been dead for a 
sufficient number of years to have passed out of 
other people’s thoughts and talk. If anyone re- 
membered to talk of Maurice now, it was in an 
17 


i8 


THE NEW AGENT 


ordinary way without the lowered voice of sym- 
pathy. So much the better, thought the father. 
Maurice was more his own now when other people 
had forgotten him. 

“Why didn’t your father come? A deucedly un- 
sociable fellow,” said Leenane, in his hearty voice. 
The film had quite cleared away by this time. 

“He likes his dinner in the middle of the day 
still,” Denys answered. “He says it suits his work 
best. I’ve been leaving too much to him. He has 
aged without me. Going off to fairs at four in the 
morning and he with a young strong son to lift his 
burdens ! I shall relieve him of all that. He looks 
wonderfully better since I’ve come.” 

“You think you’ll stay with him? There won’t 
be much at Murrough to interest you.” 

Leenane was feeling somewhat dismayed. Was 
all the result of Denys’s fine doings that he should 
come back to pull what remained of Murrough 
property out of the bog. It was not good enough 
for Denys, with his record of scholarship. 

“I could not leave him alone,” Denys answered 
simply. 

“Ah, you are right, you are right,” Leenane said 
hastily, and added, “after all, I have Dawn,” with- 
out further explanation of his thoughts. 

Mrs. Metcalfe clicked away busily with her 
needles. Never was such a placid person. Her 
placidity amused and sometimes gently irritated her 
brother, who was very fond of her. She had theo- 
ries founded on an unwavering faith in the One who 
ruled the world. Nothing ever happened amiss, 
however it might seem so, if one trusted Him. A 
deal of trouble in the world came from people not 
being content to trust Him. When something much 
desired came to naught, Mrs. Metcalfe immediately 
discovered, if she possibly could, the most wonderful 
reason for the disappointment, that turned it into 


THE NEW AGENT 


19 

a kindness. If she could discover no reason, she 
just trusted. 

Somewhere at the back of his mind Leenane was 
comforted by what he called Sophie’s fatalism. 

“I couldn’t have stuck it,” he had said, “if she 
had not arrived at it through her own trouble. Dick 
Metcalfe, the straightest rider I ever knew, broke 
his neck at the big jump at Punchestown. Her two 
children died in the same week from scarlet fever. 
She says that people always die at the most merci- 
ful moment for them. I asked her what about sui- 
cides. She said they took it out of God’s hands, 
and reminded me that A 

Betwixt the saddle and the ground 
Was Mercy sought and Mercy found. 

It suits Sophie, that comfortable belief of hers. 
She’ll never see fifty again and she has the skin and 
the eyes of a child.” 

Dawn came up the long room, between the mir- 
rors, under the glittering chandeliers, her golden 
head rising from a green silk frock, all billowy soft- 
ness, like a snowdrop from its sheath. Something 
passed over Denys Fitzmaurice’s face, — a quiver; 
he lifted his hand to his eyes as though he were 
dazzled. Leenane noticed the gesture and was 
pleased with the homage to his girl’s beauty. 

Something was stirring in his mind. He kept 
Denys unusually long in the dining-room after the 
ladies had left, pushing the decanter of port wine 
toward him along the polished table, which reflected 
the wines and fruits richly, as though it was going to 
be a lengthy sitting. 

“All this looks very well, Denys,” he said, indicat- 
ing by a wave of the hand the table with its beautiful 
silver and glass, the pictures on the wall, the side- 
board with its burden of old silver, its golden tores 
and collars dug from the bog, the gold box which 


20 


THE NEW AGENT 


contained Elizabeth’s Charter handing over Clogher 
to the Queen’s Finucane and dispossessing the recu- 
sant Finucane. Only in Ireland, would such treas- 
ures have been openly, even carelessly displayed. 

“It does, Lord Leenane,” Denys said and won- 
dered what was coming. 

“All sham and show,” went on Leenane, “glitter 
and nothing behind it. It isn’t mine. I’m in the 
hands of the Jews. I am going to sell all the stuff 
I can get rid of. Cecil’s box should yield a pretty 
bit of money, to say nothing of the Queen’s auto- 
graph.” 

“I am very sorry,” said Denys, feeling the inade- 
quacy of the remark. “I did not know.” 

“So am I — deucedly sorry. So will Dawn be 
when she knows; she loves the place. We can’t 
keep it up. The Brothers of St. Gall want it for 
a Novitiate. Comical that! You remember the 
hooks in the cellars below, where they used to hang 
the priests’ heads in the Penal Days till the official 
came down from Dublin Castle to verify the bag 
before he paid the hunter! I’m not proud of my 
ancestor who made this old house the centre of such 
traffic.” 

“It was the spirit of the times,” said Denys, “and 
after all, it was an ancestress of yours who put an 
end to it and sheltered the last victim of the priest- 
hunter, defying all the world to take him from her.” 

“Yes, yes; she was a Blake of Galway, and the 
Blakes never break their word. She had promised 
the priest safety. I hope Lady Sabina will blot out 
her husband’s stain. But, — good Lord, what a ven- 
geance for the Church to slip into the seat of the 
Finucanes. They will make a chapel of the cellars, 
you’ll see. I don’t care. It will be better than let- 
ting some farmer have it who would tear out all 


THE NEW AGENT 


21 


the beautiful things and sell them, and store potatoes 
in my wife’s drawing-room.” 

He was silent for a second during which Denys 
looked the sympathy he did not speak. If the Finu- 
canes were to be gone from Castle Clogher his own 
sacrifice to filial duty would be harder than he had 
expected. Not that he repented it. 

“After all,” Lord Leenane went on, “I’ve no son. 
It would be worse if I had a son. We’ll go travel- 
ling, Dawn and I, if the money runs to it; if not, 
when the debts are all paid it will be Bath or Chel- 
tenham or maybe Tunbridge Wells. Some tabby- 
place anyhow. I’ll end my life as a tom-cat, or a 
tame cat among the old women and the parsons.” 

There was a note of anguish in his voice at the 
prospect before him which made Denys smile, al- 
though he felt serious enough. 

“How will Miss Finucane like it?” he asked 
quietly. 

“Oh, Dawn! She’ll loathe it, poor child and 
she’ll shock the tabbies. She adores this place. I’ll 
keep a pied-a-terre for her. There is that long low 
house on the edge of Cloona Lake that the doctor 
died out of the other day. It has a pretty garden. 
I shan’t part with more of the land than I can 
help — not at present at least. I have my responsi- 
bilities towards the people.” 

He lifted his head with a gesture that revealed 
him as a man proud of his responsibilities. If the 
Finucanes had got dipped, the tenants had not suf- 
fered for it. They kept up the traditions of good 
landlordism even when all the conditions had 
changed. 

“I’ll tell you what, Denys,” he broke out sud- 
denly. “There won’t be enough for you to do at 
Murrough. Take my agency, such as it is. It’s 
been to let since old Valentine died. If I go travel- 


22 


THE NEW AGENT 


ling I shan’t want to be bothered with the affairs 
of what is left of the estate. There’ll be something 
for you in it, though it won’t be what it used to be.” 

“There are resources on the estate,” said Denys 
gravely. His heart was beating fast but he did not 
betray the elation he felt. 

“Not minerals. I’ve been after that ignis fatuus 
long enough.” 

“Not necessarily minerals. The whole country is 
lying fallow, — money wasted everywhere.” 

Once again Denys’s eyes were full of dreams. 
Once again he saw people and houses and cattle in 
the barren places. His father had said that he had 
the second sight, that he inherited it from his 
mother. Denys would like to think he had the 
second sight. Then his dreams need not come to 
nought. His dreams had great power over him. 
He came back to realities and heard Lord Leenane 
chuckle. 

“There you are !” he said. “You remember when 
you drained the Little Bog and made me your friend 
for life? You’ve no money of mine to play with. 
That’s certain. All such playthings ask for money.” 

“I know. The money will come.” 

Denys lifted his eyes under the curling lashes and 
directed a long, slow, considering glance at Lord 
Leenane. 

“I accept the agency,” he said. “I owe you every- 
thing. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, ex- 
cept the things you would not ask me to do. Keep 
as much of the property as you can; you won’t be 
sorry in the long run.” 

“I shall. It is selling men, women, and children. 
Not that things are as they once were. But the 
are fond of me. I’d never be hard on them, 
see what the house and furniture will fetch. 
I owe Aarons two thousand pounds and it’s increas- 


people 

We’ll 


THE NEW AGENT 


*3 

‘ing like a rolling snowball. I must pay him. It’s 
nothing for a man in my position, but, Good Lord, 
where am I to lay my hand on two thousand 
pounds?” 

“How much did you borrow originally?” 

“Twelve hundred. I’ve no complaint of Aarons. 
He is a gentleman in comparison with most of the 
others. He takes risks. I must pay him.” 

“He is your most pressing creditor?” 

It was a chance shot but it went home. Leenane 
burst into a shout of laughter. 

“I don’t know how you knew,” he said. “The 
others will wait. Simon Aarons, they say, often 
saves a client from ruin by making him pay up. 
You see it’s the infernal snowball.” 

“I suppose we shall have to sell,” Denys said 
sorrowfully. “I wish we could have saved the place 
— for your daughter. Couldn’t we sell something, — 
a residue of furniture, as they say in the auctioneers’ 
advertisements, and keep the place?” 

“What’s the good of that? I’ve nothing left to 
go on with. I’ll want an income even if I go tabby- 
ing.” 

“You must tell me exactly how you stand if I am 
to help,” said Denys. 

“Oh, I’ll tell you fast enough. I stand quite badly. 
I’m afraid we’re past praying for.” Leenane smiled 
to himself at something of the peremptory in 
Denys’s tone. The situation was changed since the 
day he had found Denys, his eyes full of dreams, 
staring out over the Little Bog, while the silky ear 
of Rory the setter, aging and rheumatic now, 
dropped through his fingers. 

He was tickled at the idea of Denys taking the 
reins so easily and confidently. Denys Fitzmaurice 
the son of old Pat, who had come down to be just 
a small farmer and horse breeder, if he was a Fitz- 


24 


THE NEW AGENT 


maurice of Murrough ! It was only in this country 
where pedigrees counted that Fitzmaurice would 
have been held in any consideration. So many gen- 
erations of the Fitzmaurices had been farmers that 
their past glories might well be forgotten. There 
was the gaunt tower of Murrough. And, — yes, — 
the Fitzmaurices had a death-warning, — not like the 
Finucane banshee who cried in the night when a 
death was about to take place in the family, — but a 
white hare that crossed the path of the Fitzmaurices, 
running under their feet in some gloaming. Many 
a peasant had seen the White Hare of the Fitz- 
maurices. In some respects it was a better authen- 
ticated ghost than the Finucane banshee. 

Lord Leenane was thinking half-whimsically. A 
spasm twisted his face ever so slightly when the 
swiftly flying thoughts rested a second on the vision 
of Castle Clogher, the big comfortable house, as a 
ruined pile and open to the wind and weather as 
Murrough had been these seventy years back. 

“You’ve strong young shoulders to take on my 
ruinous affairs, Denys,” he said, his face still wry 
from the bitter thought. “I’d have been more care- 
ful maybe, or more lucky, if Maurice had lived. 
Never mind about Dawn. She will be happy at the 
Little House when we want a change from the tab- 
bies. I’d rather this place went if I couldn’t keep it 
up with dignity.” 

They sat so long in the dining-room that Dawn 
was a little vexed about it. It was so lonely in the 
big drawing-room, where her aunt sat reading and 
knitting by the light of a shaded lamp. Dawn was 
interested in Denys Fitzmaurice, who had drained 
the Little Bog and made a green field as far as the 
trees that stood with their feet in the water, under 
the sky of immense white clouds piled upon indigo 
blue. When they came at last there was only time 


THE NEW AGENT 


25 

to say good-night. Somewhat to Dawn’s chagrin 
Denys Fitzmaurice seemed in a hurry to be gone. 

He stayed up into the small hours talking with 
his father. The magnitude of the thing he pro- 
posed took Patrick Fitzmaurice’s breath away. It 
was no less than that Denys should have at his dis- 
posal to do what he would with, and at once, the 
sum of two thousand pounds. 

“It will make a big hole in what has taken so 
many years to put together, lad,” he said; but he 
had no intention of refusing. 

“I will give it back to you and more,” Denys 
answered. 

“Was I complainin’ for myself? Isn’t it for you 
I was gatherin’ it?” 

But he did not say the thing could not be done. 
Like many an Irish farmer he had invested little. 
There was a large sum of money on deposit in the 
bank. There was security for what remained. Pat- 
rick Fitzmaurice * was well pleased that his son 
should be Lord Leenane’s agent. What if the Finu- 
canes were treading the path the Fitzmaurices had 
trodden before them, — coming down in the world? 
The agent was often a better born man than his 
employer. And Leenane had done handsomely by 
the boy and now the boy could repay it. Heaven 
alone knew what ambitious dreams began to dazzle 
before Patrick Fitzmaurice’s eyes for the future of 
his family restored to the old estate. 

A few days later Denys Fitzmaurice left Mur- 
rough with a check for two thousand pounds in his 
pocketbook and without saying goodby to his new 
employer. 


CHAPTER III 

MRS. AARONS 

M r. Aarons lived in a stately Queen Anne house 
in a quiet cul-de-sac of West End London. 
Nothing could have looked less like a moneylender’s 
establishment than the porticoed door, the freshly 
curtained windows, stirred by the west wind, the 
polished brass of the handle and door-knocker, the 
staid respectability of the man-servant who admitted 
Denys Fitzmaurice, some two days after that dinner 
at Castle Clogher, to a square hall paved in dia- 
monds of black and white marble, flooded with light 
from an arched window at the head of the great 
staircase. 

The first thing that struck Denys was the strange 
silence of the house. The sharp tapping of a type- 
writer somewhere nearby only served to accentuate 
it. Scarcely a hundred yards away was a roaring 
artery of London. One might have been “lapped 
in lead” so utterly had the rumble of the traffic 
ceased. There was a fresh country smell, due to 
the bowls of wallflowers and pitchers of lilac that 
stood on onyx and buhl tables. It might have been 
a country house set deep in gardens and fields. 

Denys waited in a little round room of many 
doors, the walls of which were frescoed with female 
heads set in wreaths. He admired absently the old 
mahogany doors, deep set, and the architraves above 
them. The ceiling of the many-doored room was 
very ornate. There were books and magazines on 
a table within reach of the comfortable chairs. It 
might have been die waiting-room of a fashionable 
doctor. 


26 


MRS. AARONS 


27 


Presently the door opened and there entered a 
remarkably handsome man. Velasquez might have 
painted Mr. Simon Aarons. He claimed to spring 
from Spanish Jews, and the golden olive of his com- 
plexion had no touch of dinginess in it. His eyes 
were piercingly bright; his gray hair had a gracious 
wave; his aquiline features were not too marked. 
As he sat in the high-backed chair facing his visitor, 
Denys Fitzmaurice became aware that the long- 
fingered hand hanging negligently over the knob of 
the chair arm had been carefully manicured. Fie 
said to himself that there was a certain nobility in 
the finely shaped head and that the fingers were 
more imaginative than acquisitive. 

“I came in reference to Lord Leenane’s debt to 
you, Mr. Aarons,” he began, without preliminary. 

“You come from his lordship?” 

The bright eyes roamed over Denys Fitzmaurice, 
seeming to take him in, to appraise him from head 
to foot. 

“I am his lordship’s agent. He has appointed me 
to manage his Irish property.” 

“Ah, that will not be a very difficult matter,” said 
Mr. Aarons smiling. His voice was the Jewish 
voice, but less thick than in most of his compatriots, 
and with notes of music in it. 

“I mean to pull some of it out of the fire for him,” 
said Denys, with a slight sense of exasperation. 
“Why?” 

It was an unexpected and surprising question. It 
surprised Denys with a sudden knowledge that one 
element in his desire and determination to save Lord 
Leenane from his own thriftlessness — the element 
that gave his resolve something of passion, — was, 
that Dawn Finucane should not lose the home she 
loved. He colored hotly, not so much because Mr. 
Aarons had put a leading question as that he had 


28 


MRS. AARONS 


discovered his own hidden motive. He was vexed 
with himself. Was not gratitude for all that had 
been done for him a sufficient motive? 

“Lord Leenane has a daughter, I believe?” 

Again Denys colored. He answered stiffly that 
Lord Leenane had a daughter, that he had lost his 
only son. 

“Ach, that was bad, to lose his only son. But 

would Mr. ” he glanced at the card on the table 

before him, — “Fitzmaurice, be good enough to say 
how he, Mr. Aarons, could oblige him?” 

“I want to know how much you’ll take off the 
debt,” said Denys bluntly. 

“Take off the debt!” 

Mr. Aarons looked horrified. 

“But that is not the way\we do business, young 
man. I am not a philanthropic character or a public 
benefactor.” 

“I don’t know. I’ve heard some queer things told 
of you.” 

Mr. Aarons began to chuckle, and the Jew came 
out in his face. 

“Ach, queer,” he said. “And what might you call 
queer? I daresay there are queer stories. People 
come to me ready to pay anything for the use of 
my money. They think not to stick to their bargains. 
They cry out that they have been robbed.” 

“Not queer things of that sort, — the other sort, 
rather. I have heard romantic stories of generous 
things you have done, debts you have foregone.” 

“You ask me to forego the proper interest on 
Lord Leenane’s debt to me ?” 

The golden olive face was suddenly furrowed with 
lines of cunning and suspicion. 

“I am prepared to pay you in full, Mr. Aarons.” 

“Ach, you are prepared to pay me in full. Then 
why did you not say so? You have lent this money 
to Lord Leenane. I tell you, you will lose it. He 


MRS. AARONS 


29 

is a bottomless pit. Why should you lose your 
money in a bottomless pit?” 

“You are pressing him. Is not that a reason why 
we should pay off the debt?” 

“It is business. I have nothing to do with press- 
ing him. It is the routine of my office. Better for 
him to pay, if he has to sell out. He has not paid 
me my interest.” 

“He is going to sell out. It is what I want to 
prevent. I will tell you, Mr. Aarons. I owe a great 
debt of gratitude to Lord Leenane. I shall explain.” 

He told simply what Lord Leenane had done for 
him, while Mr. Aarons listened attentively. 

“And so,” he concluded, “I want to do my best 
for him, to pull him out of his difficulties. I owe it 
to him, and to myself. You say he is a bottomless 
pit. I do not believe it. He has not lost his money 
in any of the usual discreditable ways. He has made 
bad investments and has lost heavily. He has been 
too generous to his friends in misfortune. He has 
been too easy with his tenants — a good fault where 
many are too hard. He had not so much to make 
away with. The Finucanes are poor, ruined by the 
too-lavish good nature of the Eighteenth Century. 
He has no head for business. I shall be by his side. 
The minerals are there, though he lost his money 
looking for them. He talks of ending his days at 
Bath or Cheltenham or perhaps Tunbridge Wells. 
He won’t be able to breathe in such places. Fie has 
had a free open-air life among his own people. 
They were fond of him even when they paid him 
no rent. The stuffiness would kill him in a year.” 
There was something of a passionate pleading in the 
speech. 

There came a tap at the door and the respectable 
man-servant came in with a card on a tray. Mr. 
Aarons glanced at it. 

“You can show his lordship in here,” he said. 


30 


MRS . AARONS 


Then he waved Denys towards the door, following 
him with a shepherding air. 

“You shall talk to Rachel,” he said, “to my wife, 
Mrs. Simon Aarons. I will see you again. It is she 
does the romantic foolish things that give my busi- 
ness a bad name. You do not suppose all this — ” 
he waved his hand around the hall through which 
they were passing — “was got by romance. No.” 

He opened a door and allowed Denys to precede 
him. The room they entered was a very large room, 
and seemed larger because it was panelled in white 
wood. Denys saw that it was full of beautiful 
things, or rather that the things it contained were 
all beautiful. The windows had been thrown up 
from the bottom, giving a glimpse of garden beds 
outside full of gay flowers and a distant line of 
poplars not yet robbed of their first heavenly green. 

The fragrance and freshness, as of a country 
morning, in the room seemed to gather about the 
lady, no longer very young, who sat by a table, 
writing. She turned around, then stood up and came 
to meet them. Denys judged her to be somewhere 
in the forties, perhaps the late forties, although her 
face was quite unwrinkled. She was beautiful, al- 
though youth and she had long parted company. 
She had placid broad brows and large, quiet grey 
eyes. Her lips had a curious sweetness. Something 
of benignity flowed from her presence as at her hus- 
band’s introduction she smiled at Denys. 

“You will talk to Mr. Fitzmaurice, Rachel,” Mr. 
Aarons said. “If he is not in too great a hurry you 
will persuade him to spend the week-end at Home- 
wood. He is impetuous. He will do business in a 
single minute. It is not my way. A business like 
mine moves slowly. I must have time to think.” 

He went off leaving Denys to Mrs. Aarons. He 
felt pleased at being left to Mrs. Aarons. She went 


MRS. AARONS 


3i 


over and stirred the fire. He had not noticed that 
there was a fire, but there was a touch of east wind 
in the April morning and with the open windows 
the fire was pleasant. 

“Now,” she said, in a full rich voice, “you shall 
sit down and talk to me. I hope you have not come 
to borrow money from my husband. It is a bad way 
to begin.” 

He sat down obediently, facing her at the other 
side of the fireplace. A little fox terrier got down 
from a sofa and came to make friends with him. 
He lifted the dog to his knee. The circumstances 
were so amazing, so unexpected, that he did not 
know how to answer her for a second or two. 

“Ah,” he said, after a slight pause. “It is you 
who do all the kind things. That explains it.” 

“You have heard of us!” she said and smiled. 
Her eyes were soft as velvet and deep as night. 
She seemed enveloped in the most wonderful soft- 
ness. Her grey dress of some fine woollen material, 
held with a girdle of blue stones set in dull silver, 
suggested a softness all its own. As she leant for- 
ward with her reassuring smile it was as though she 
might offer Denys a motherly caress. The fine pearl 
earrings swung in her ears and showed up against 
the richly-tinted olive of her neck and cheek. 

“Oh, but you are wrong,” she said. “Simon 
Aarons is a very good man. He is a just man. The 
people of our race make a hard bargain but they 
observe it. Sometimes, if the bargain presses too 
hard or someone is young and foolish, Simon puts 
it into my hands to release him or the other one. 
It is not I who do it. It is Simon who gives me the 
power. He is the ultimate tribunal. I may make 
mistakes, — ” a shadow passed across the deep wells 
of her eyes as though a cloud moved above water — 
“it is not often that happens, nor that my husband 


32 


MRS . AARONS 


says to me: ‘Rachel, you have been misled, my 
woman. I stick to my bargain.’ It all rests with 
him. He lets it pass through my hands. And 
now — what have you to tell me?” 

She seemed to Denys a wonderful woman, and 
as he looked at her, he remembered the great women 
of her race and said to himself that she was fit to sit 
down among them. There was genius in her kind- 
ness, in her air of gentle command, her enveloping 
motherliness. Her gaze at him was so benign that 
he felt as though a mild sun had come out and was 
shining on him. 

“Go on,” she commanded. “Tell it to me from 
the beginning, — straight through. Then I shall see 
if I can help.” 

As though impelled, Denys began far back with 
the Fitzmaurices of Murrough and how they had 
become impoverished for the Faith that was in them. 
At that she nodded her head softly and her long 
finger tips met each other; her eyes looked at him 
with a spiritual understanding. He told how the 
Fitzmaurices had come down to a little bog farm 
while the Finucanes held their territories; how the 
Castle of Murrough stood up gaunt and roofless 
against the sky; how Lord Leenane had come that 
day long ago and bidden him jestingly to drain the 
Little Bog; how he had done it and it had become 
fruitful earth, as far as the trees that stood with 
their feet in the water. Of Dawn’s share in the 
enterprise he said nothing, barely mentioning that 
she came with her father that day. Then he went 
on to tell what Leenane had done for him, and how 
he had returned home with the precious gift of 
education, to find his friend and benefactor ruined. 
Finally, he mentioned that he had two thousand 
pounds to offer as payment in full of Lord Leenane’s 
debt to Mr. Aarons, adding that he hoped Mr. 


MRS. AARONS 


33 

Aarons would see his way to reduce his rate of 
interest. 

“We want time,” he said, blushing ingenuously, 
“and we want some money to go on with. There 
will be the rents in September. There are lots of 
things to be done with the estate if only we had time 
and some money to work it. There are quantities 
of timber, the trees strangling each other for breath. 
There are salmon in the river which are poached 
and quantities of game. They even shoot the 
salmon. I would hang a man who shot a salmon. 
There are minerals. Lord Leenane has dropped a 
deal of money over them because he fell into the 
hands of unscrupulous prospectors who want to buy 
the mineral rights for a song. There is turf — acres 
of it. A good drainage scheme would give him miles 
of arable and pasture land which is now marsh. 
You could do anything with the water-power of the 
rivers.” 

His eyes saw visions and dreamed dreams. For 
the moment he was far away from her. 

“It is your own money,” she said softly. 

He started and stammered with the air of one 
who has been sharply pulled up. 

“My father had it lying by,” he said. “They will 
put money in the Irish banks on deposit receipt.” 

“And the young lady is very charming?” Mrs. 
Aarons went on in a voice soft as silk. 

“Yes, she is very charming.” 

“Ah, I understand now, and I can lay the case 
before my husband. He will probably not decide 
at once. He has asked you to spend the week-end 
with us at Homewood. I hope you will be able to?” 

He had wanted to get back as quickly as possible 
but of course, he had to wait for a decision. Some- 
thing in her manner told him that the decision would 
not be made this side of the week-end. 


34 


MRS. AARONS 


“My husband takes his time,” she said, as though 
she understood his thoughts. “Will you lunch, and, 
if you have not much to do and do not know London 
very well I could take you somewhere. There are 
some things of our own I should like to show you.” 

“Thank you,” said Denys gratefully. “I shall 
stay with very great pleasure.” 

After all, it was a wonderful adventure. While 
they awaited the luncheon hour Mrs. Aarons played 
to him on the great organ which occupied one end of 
the music-room that opened off the drawing-room. 
When she played, still more when she sang, she 
was inspired. Denys watching her, fascinated by 
her, forgot her grey hairs and the graceful ampli- 
tude of her figure. The beauty of early maturity 
had come back to her with the music. 

He was surprised at the magnificence of her voice 
until she enlightened him. While he thanked her 
with glowing eyes she said: 

“I am growing old and my voice grows old with 
me. You are too young to have heard me in the 
great days when I was Alba, but you may have 
heard my name.” 

He had heard her name. The greatness of it still 
lingered. So she was Alba — and married to the 
Jew money-lender almost as famous in his way as 
she in hers ! It was indeed an adventure. 

The expression of his eyes pleased her. She 
laughed and said: 

“You can now say that Alba gave you a concert 
all to yourself.” 


CHAPTER IV 

THE OTHER MAN 

T here was another guest at the luncheon-table 
for whom Denys conceived a very definite dis- 
like. He was evidently a soldier, although in mufti, 
and he came in with the air of one belonging to the 
house rather than as an invited guest. “Ah, Hil- 
ary!” said Mrs. Aarons, when they found the young 
man seated in the drawing-room on their return 
from the music-room. They were facing a round 
mirror in a splendid Venetian frame, and by chance 
Denys caught a glimpse of his hostess’s face, the 
light full on it from the open windows. She was 
looking with real tenderness on the young man, who 
had been reading an early edition of an evening 
paper while the music went on a few feet away. 
“This is kind, Hilary,” she said. “So kind to come 
to see me.” 

The young man whom she had called Hilary took 
her hand and bent over it with what Denys described 
mentally as a dancing master’s deference. The hand 
was worth kissing, if it was only for the beauty of 
its rings; a black pearl of great price on one finger, 
a pink pearl on the other. Mrs. Aarons drew her 
hand away with the air of a shy young girl as she 
introduced them. “Captain* Arundel — Mr. Fitz- 
maurice.” 

Captain Arundel certainly seemed very much at 
home. He was a rather small, neat young man, 
handsome of his kind, and with a certain aristocratic 
air, worthy of a guardsman — a Coldstreamer. 

Denys detested at first sight his blue, chilly eyes, 
the little golden moustache and sleek golden head, 
35 


THE OTHER MAN 


36 

the pinkish face, the perfection of his figure, his 
slow, rather insolent voice. 

But Mrs. Aarons seemed to find nothing amiss 
with Captain Arundel. Simon Aarons came to the 
luncheon-table, ate sparingly of a very simple dish, 
drank a glass of water and went away. He had 
said little and seemed preoccupied while he stayed. 

Captain Arundel talked a good deal about people 
of whom Denys knew nothing and about things in 
which he was little interested; he talked with a cer- 
tain cleverness, interspersed with bursts of thin 
laughter in which Mrs. Aarons joined with a merri- 
ment that added to her new aspect of youth in 
Denys’ eyes. While she looked at and talked to this 
fop, this coxcomb, as Denys called him irascibly in 
his own mind, the girl she had been came back curi- 
ously and looked out of her eyes and her smile. 

Denys was silent, if not well content to listen. 
He was fascinated by Mrs. Aarons and wondered 
at the strangeness of her evident affection for Cap- 
tain Arundel and of her pleasure in his society. 

After a time she made an effort to draw him into 
the conversation, while Captain Arundel hesitated 
over his choice of the wines, which Denys noticed 
were always set before him by the butler as though 
it was he whose tastes were to be consulted. She 
asked some question about life in the West of Ire- 
land, as though she was very much interested. 

Captain Arundel chose his wine and turned to 
Denys with a new but still languid interest. 

“Oh,” he said, “you came from that bog land! 
What part?” 

“Castletown-Erris.” 

“Do you know the Leenanes?” 

Denys set his face like steel so that he should 
betray nothing — he had not lost the schoolboy habit 
of coloring easily — but he thought he had failed 


THE OTHER MAN 


37 

when he saw, or fancied he saw, a look of cool 
amusement in Arundel’s eyes. 

“I am acting as Lord Leenane’s agent,” he said, 
icily. 

“Oh! quite a coincidence! I met him and his 
daughter in Scotland last Autumn. A jolly little 
girl, Dawn, and a good sportswoman.” 

Very pointedly Denys changed the conversation, 
asking Mrs. Aarons for the name of the painter of 
a small head of a boy on the opposite wall. 

She looked uneasily from one to the other of the 
young men as though she had discovered their an- 
tagonism, while she gave the name of the painter. 

“It is very clever of you to pick it out,” she said. 
“It is by the Spanish painter, Goya, and is one of 
the gems of our collection. My husband calls it the 
Golden Boy.” 

Captain Arundel disappeared after lunch. He 
was driving a party down to Hurlingham and had 
not even time for a cigarette. Denys breathed more 
freely when he was gone. They said goodbye with 
stiff coldness on Denys’ part, while Arundel ex- 
tended the tips of his fingers with his air of chilly 
insolence. 

When the clang of the heavy hall-door had rever- 
berated through the house Mrs. Aarons turned to 
Denys with a smile, half merry, half deprecating. 

“You boys do not like each other,” she said. 
“Tell me — is it Miss Dawn? Are you both among 
her adorers?” 

“I should not presume to adore Miss Finucane,” 
Denys said, coldly, and then felt ashamed for the 
kindness of the splendid dark eyes with their won- 
derful changing expression. 

“Ah,” she said softly, “she might not call it pre- 
sumption.” 


38 


THE OTHER MAN 


While they drove she asked many questions about 
Dawn, and Denys, forgetting how Hilary Arundel 
had irked him, answered simply, telling more than 
he was aware of to his attentive listener. 

They drove across the Park on their way to the 
South London slum in which Mr. and Mrs. Aarons 
had built and endowed a children’s hospital. There 
were also alms-houses after the ancient manner, an 
oblong of little houses, with all manner of conveni- 
ences, for the old ladies who lived there, built around 
a stretch of green grass, a few thorn-trees and a 
fountain; another group about a central building 
which contained a dining-hall, billiard-room, library 
and smoking-room. These were for the old men. 

“We wish to do something for the children,” 
Mrs. Aarons said, her eyes widening and softening. 
“We adore children, although we are childless. And 
the old men and women, are they not children again? 
We shall do something for the poor women too, 
presently when we have had time to think it out — 
a hospital for the mothers, perhaps. One has to 
be so careful and so wise when one gives.” 

They returned by way of the Park, which was 
crowded; and Denys had an idea that some of the 
very smart men they met, as well as the ladies, re- 
garded him with envy. Mrs. Aarons received as 
many greetings as though she were a Duchess, which 
she might have been indeed, as she leant back in 
the stately carriage behind the high-stepping horses. 
There was nothing smarter in the Park than the 
whole turn-out. 

Going down on Saturday afternoon from Victoria 
to Homewood, Denys was not pleased to run up 
against Captain Arundel on the platform. They 
greeted each other with a curt nod and passed on, 
but they went down by the same train and were 
obliged to walk up together by the long tree-hung 


THE OTHER MAN, 39 

climbing road which lay between Homewood and the 
station. It would have been too ridiculous not to 
have walked together, so they made the best of it, 
and were engaged in apparently amicable conversa- 
tion when Mrs. Aarons, who had come to meet 
them, surrounded by a bevy of joyously-barking and 
leaping dogs, caught sight of them as she emerged 
from a shrubbery. 

Denys was delighted with the beauty of Home- 
wood, and the lovely country of woods and chalk 
hills, with delightful houses set down here and there 
amid the groves and gardens. The primroses were 
all out ; the woods fairly blue with the opening blue- 
bells and full of a delicate, delicious fragrance under 
the boughs of green silk, faintly fine. 

That evening they had music after dinner, and 
Mrs. Aarons sang, while Hilary Arundel stood by 
the piano and turned the leaves of her music. On 
the Sunday there were many visitors, and a full 
table for lunch and dinner. During the afternoon 
Mr. Aarons took Denys away from the visitors, 
from whom he himself seemed glad to escape, for 
a walk in the woods, which were in full beauty. 

He had taken off his hat and walked with it in 
his hand as though he felt the breeze pleasant on 
his brow and hair. It was interesting to see Mr. 
Aarons at his country house; he seemed even more 
unlike Aarons the money-lender than he had been 
in London. He was learned in trees and wild- 
flowers ; he knew a deal about birds and had watched 
them, unseen, in their secret haunts, and observed 
them when they were not startled by the eyes of 
men upon them. He confessed that he would have 
chosen to be a country gentleman if he could have 
chosen his life ; he would have farmed his own land, 
grown his own crops and bred his own beasts. 


40 


THE OTHER MAN 


“I want to do it here but I can’t,” he said. “They 
simply won’t let me be anything else but what I am. 
Strange as it may seem to you, young man, it would 
be as bad a thing for me to retire from business as 
for a great doctor to give up his practice. Worse, 
because it would affect a greater number of people.” 

He turned suddenly to Denys and flashed at him 
something of defiance. 

“When they tell you a money-lender has no bowels 
of mercy, don’t believe them,” he said, and went on 
to talk, his eyes down, his hands behind his back. 

“I am like Robin Hood; I take from the rich and 
give to the poor. My career was fixed for me be- 
fore I was born. I would prefer flocks and herds 
rather than the breed of barren metal. If I were 
not a Jew I should have been a farmer. I should 
like to destroy the tradition that Jews do not till 
the earth.” 

Presently he was searching the hedgerows and the 
undergrowth for birds’ nests, being cunning in find- 
ing even the most hidden. His long slender fingers 
would part the leaves ever so gently to reveal the 
little head of the brooding bird. He could tell when 
some of them had begun sitting, and when the young 
birds would come. In some of the nests there were 
already nestlings, gaping with open beaks for what 
the foraging father brought them. 

Suddenly Mr. Aarons turned to Denys and fixed 
his eyes full upon him. They had a compelling 
force. 

“Tell me,” he said, “what do you think of 
Arundel?” 

Denys hesitated. 

“I see you don’t like him,” Mr. Aarons said. 
“Neither do I. My wife is attached to him. We 
never had any children. Odd that she should like 
Arundel 1 So many pretty boys and good boys — 


THE OTHER MAN 


4 * 


good, even if they have played ducks and drakes 
with their money — come here and to Stratfield 
Place. They all adore my wife. She is very good 
to them. She likes Arundel best of all. It is very 
strange. You never can tell with a woman.” 

They stood by the water’s edge a while in silence. 
Tough green shoots were pushing through the earth. 
A little later it would be a forest of foxgloves. 
Through the clear brown water they could see the 
water lily roots sending up their long leaves to the 
light. 

Suddenly Mr. Aarons said a strange thing. “I 
do not see Hilary Arundel in the place of the boy 
who ought to have been ours.” 

It was almost as though he had not known he 
had a listener. Denys did not answer him. Ap- 
parently he expected no answer, and there was 
nothing to say. 

They had crossed a bridge between the lakes and 
come back, and they were in sight of the lawn 
crowded with people — through the shimmering 
leaves they caught glints of the gay colors of the 
ladies’ dresses, for the Sunday was very fine and had 
brought down many London visitors — when Mr. 
Aarons suddenly spoke of the business which had 
brought Denys to London. 

They stood by a swing-gate leading from the 
lawns into a coppice. The path dipped sharply, so 
that they were out of sight. Some of the dogs that 
had been left behind had discovered them and joined 
their fellows, who had been taken for a walk in 
a cheerful hunt after small game through the green 
uncurling fronds of the new bracken. 

“I’ve been talking to my wife about Lord Lee- 
nane’s affairs,” he said. “I’ve no sympathy with 
him, but there’s a daughter, and he helped you. 
Perhaps he has learned sense by now. I remit the 


42 


THE OTHER MAN 


interest. If you wish tq pay me twelve hundred 
pounds on his behalf I will give you a clear receipt.’* 

“That is very generous of you,” said Denys, 
flushing with surprise and delight. 

“Another thing — if you have any really good 
scheme for developing his property, I will advance 
what money you require at 3^ per cent. No wild- 
cat schemes, you know. My wife told me how you 
drained the bog. Tell me now” — he turned the 
conversation easily — “how many varieties of or- 
chises have you in your part of the world. A man 
who has been there told me he had found five.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t know, sir,” said Denys. 

“Oh, you should know ! These things are worth 
studying, far better worth than the things people 
bother themselves about. I have a collection of 
plants I intended to leave to Merton College, Ox- 
ford. If I had had a son he should have gone there. 
I should like to show them to you sometime. Now 
I am afraid we shall have missed our tea.” 

The tea was over but fresh tea was brought. 
Afterwards Mr. Aarons disappeared within the 
house, and Denys, a little shy of the crowd of un- 
known and mainly fashionable people, wandered 
away towards the stables, where he was always at 
home. He was interested in the horses, that with 
a confident friendliness hung their long silken noses 
over the stable doors to be fondled by his hands. 

From the stables he wandered further afield. He 
was in a leafy walk by the side of one of the many 
lakes, when a low, thin laugh reached his ear. He 
knew it with distaste for Hilary Arundel’s. There 
was something triumphant in the sound of the 
laughter, something cruel, to his mind. 

There were two people in a little boat moored 
in the shadow of the trees. He had not known the 
lake was so near — just beyond the as yet thin screen 


THE OTHER MAN 


43 


of the young leaves. There was a girl in a white 
dress and a big hat — Denys could not see her face — 
but Hilary Arundel was easily distinguishable. They 
were much too occupied with each other to discover 
his presence. With a sudden anger, inexplicable 
save by his dislike and distrust of Hilary Arundel, 
he turned sharply and walked away. 


CHAPTER V 


AT THE OPERA 

D enys was in London for some ten days, daring 
which he was the guest of the Aarons, before 
the business was settled up and the money finally 
paid over. Sometimes it seemed to him that Mr. 
Aarons was deliberately slow about settling the mat- 
ter, but of course that could not be. 

It would have been a delightful time if he had 
not been so anxious to get back to Ireland. He 
wanted to make a clean breast of what he had been 
doing, to Lord Leenane. Oddly enough, now that 
he had settled the matter very much to his own 
liking, he began to be a little afraid as to how Lord 
Leenane would take his interference. He was ac- 
customed to an unreasonable pride in his country- 
men. Would Leenane swear at him for his meddle- 
someness and refuse to take the release he had ob- 
tained? A far-fetched idea, but it was quite on the 
cards. 

He vexed himself over this contingency in his 
quiet moments. He had not so very many. Mrs. 
Aarons was showing him London with a kind thor- 
oughness. He went everywhere. He was meeting 
many interesting people. She seemed to go where 
she would, and she carried him in her train to vari- 
ous great houses, where she was obviously held in 
honor. He heard wonderful music, wonderful talk. 
He saw people of whom he had read in the news- 
papers. Altogether, it was a wonderful open win- 
dow on Life with a large L. At one of the smart 
houses, where there was a big evening party, Denys 
found himself sitting in a corner with a little old, 
44 


AT THE OPERA 


45 


great lady, whose bright eyes shone at him from 
amid a network of wrinkles in a little old parch- 
ment face. He hardly knew how he had come there. 
He had been standing apart from the crowd while 
Mrs. Aarons was singing, and the old lady had 
plucked his arm and made him sit down beside her. 

“I’ve been looking at you,” she said when the 
song ceased and the buzz of conversation broke out 
anew. “You are with Rachel Aarons. You are one 
of her little boys.” 

Denys flushed. It was a queer way of putting it, 
and something he was not used to. But he said the 
right thing judging from the approval he saw in the 
old lady’s face, although he spoke stiffly. “I am 
very proud if I am one of Mrs. Aarons’s little boys.” 

“That is quite prettily spoken, my dear,” she said. 
“I say what I think. You mustn’t mind if it seems 
odd. You’re new to London, I can see. When you 
get used to us you will hear all about me, — Lady 
Caroline Woolchester. I’m a privileged person and 
say just what I please. Well, it is a very good 
thing to be one of Rachel Aarons’s little boys.” 

“Mrs. Aarons is very kind to me,” said Denys, 
with a stiff embarrassment. 

“Oh, I can see what’s the matter with you. 
You don’t like to be lumped. And perhaps you don’t 
like to be called a little boy. But you are, you know. 
Just a little boy in the nursery to me. What age do 
you suppose I am?” 

Denys glanced fearfully at the wrinkles which 
were certainly very many, and was about to say that 
he could not possibly guess, when the old lady inter- 
rupted him. 

“I know you are going to say seventy,” she said, 
“and I should never have forgiven you. I am eighty- 
seven. I was born in the year of Waterloo. Let me 
think now what I was going to say. We won’t get 


4 6 


AT THE OPERA 


much chance of talking, once people find me out 
You should be very glad to be one of Rachel 
Aarons’s little boys. She is a splendid creature. 
Can you tell me why she married Simon Aarons?” 
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Denys. 

“I didn’t suppose you could. It was a sacrifice, 
even if they are happy together. I know for a fact 
that Rachel Alba could have married into the peer- 
age if she had wanted to. She might have gone 
further and fared worse. Simon Aarons loves the 

? round she walks on, and she has saved his soul. 

le does the most ridiculous things — for a money- 
lender.” 

“I know,” said Denys. 

“H’m !” said Lady Caroline disapprovingly. “So 
you’ve been going the pace, too. I don’t know who 
you are; but I didn’t think you looked like a fash- 
ionable young man.” 

“I’m not,” said Denys, and laughed. “And I 
have not been going the pace. I am just an Irish 
farmer and the son of an Irish farmer. I am Denys 
Fitzmaurice of Murrough.” 

“It sounds a good name.” 

“I added the ‘Murrough’,” Denys said honestly, 
“because I like the sound of it. Murrough is only 
a ruin now. We have gone down in the world.” 

“You’ll go up again. I can see — it’s your dream 
to rebuild Murrough.” 

Denys looked at this strange old lady in wonder. 
“I don’t know how you knew,” he said, “but it is 
true. It is one of my dreams. I have many.” 

“Don’t marry someone who will have no sym- 
pathy with your dream. I know a man who had just 
such a dream as yours. He has moved mountains 
to realize it. Now that he might do it he has a 
fashionable English wife and half a dozen scornful 
children who smile at his dreams of repossessing a, 


AT THE OPERA 


47 

ruined castle in Kerry, because it happened to be 
the cradle of his race.” 

The crowd moved, broke up, and someone found 
Lady Caroline in her corner, a tall distinguished- 
looking man with a blue ribbon and a star on his 
breast. 

“I have been looking everywhere for you, Lady 
Caroline,” he said; “I am to have the great honor 
and pleasure of taking you in to supper.” 

“And I am extremely hungry for it,” she an- 
swered, addressing him by a name that made Denys 
stare reverently — “and for your always delightful 
conversation.” 

She placed her hand on his arm. Then she spoke 
behind her fan to Denys. 

“I should be glad if it were you and not that fop, 
Arundel,” she said. “Come and see me, 9 W a Bel- 
grave Gardens. Better, I’ll get Rachel to bring 
you to dinner.” 

Again Mr. and Mrs. Aarons went out of town 
for the week-end and Denys went with them. In 
his own mind he was impatient to return, his mission 
being accomplished, but the kindness was so great 
that he was perforce silent. Still Mr. Aarons de- 
layed to give him his quittance and bid him go. In 
ways it was a very delightful holiday. The days 
were packed full with incident and interest and every 
day his admiration and affection for Mrs. Aarons 
grew. He had ceased to ask himself as Lady Caro- 
line Woolchester had asked, why she had married 
Mr. Aarons. There seemed such a perfect under- 
standing between them. 

The money-lender, very often, did not show at 
all at his wife’s parties; but sometimes he came in 
and asked for a cup of tea when the drawing-rooms 
were crowded; and one evening at the Opera, Denys 
turned round at the sound of a closing door and 


AT THE OPERA 


found that Mr. Aarons had slipped into a chair at 
the back of the box. He was an ardent lover of 
music like so many of his race. 

That evening, Captain Arundel had come up from 
Windsor where he was stationed, had dined at Strat- 
field Place and accompanied them to the Opera, 
where they arrived in time for the first scene. He 
had something else to go on to before returning to 
Windsor by the midnight train, he explained. 

There had been a third guest at dinner, a young 
lady whom Mrs. Aarons introduced as Miss Barton 
and addressed as Margery. 

“Margery’s father has lent her to me for a few 
days,” she said to Denys. “She is all he has, and 
he can hardly bear her out of his sight.” 

Miss Barton smiled and flushed. Denys noticed 
that she flushed very easily. She was very young, — 
hardly more than eighteen, he judged, and she had 
a small, dark, beautiful profile with such ardent eyes, 
as are oftener seen in the South than the colder 
North. She was somewhat flamboyantly dressed for 
so young a girl, in geranium-pink satin, softened 
indeed by the puritanical little muslin fichu draped 
about her shoulders and held in place by a beautiful 
dark red rose. But nothing could have made a 
better setting for her passionate, yet innocent beauty. 
She hardly glanced at Denys, but he was quite well 
content. He observed her quickly. He had a baf- 
fling sense of having seen her somewhere before. 
Of course it must be a delusion, he said to himself; 
he could not have seen anything so beautiful without 
remembering it definitely. 

Hilary Arundel had come in late for dinner. 
Denys happened to look at Miss Barton as he en- 
tered. He saw that she quivered suddenly from 
head to foot. Deep color flooded her cheeks, and, 
as she looked down at her plate, he had an intuition 


AT THE OPERA 


49 


that it was to conceal the joy in her eyes under the 
night dark lashes. 

He had an amazed wonder at so much feeling for 
the cold, supercilious young gentleman, who came 
in apologizing for his lateness, bowing over his hos- 
tess’ hand as though he kissed it. He nodded curtly 
to Denys. Then his eyes went on to the girl who 
was so obviously in love with him, and a cold, half- 
amused triumph was in his smile as he went round to 
shake hands with her. 

Denys felt himself cast in those days for the part 
of spectator. He was well-content, feeling his own 
real life to be far away. Captain Arundel had kept 
the ball of light conversation going at the dinner 
table. It was a round table and an electric bulb, 
green-shaded, drawn low on a bowl of growing lilies 
of the valley amid their exquisite leaves, divided 
Denys from his aversion; but he did not deny, even 
to himself, that Arundel talked well. 

Mrs. Aarons seemed to think so. She was look- 
ing extremely well in a dress of such blue as belongs 
to the night-sky, a deep dark wonderful blue. She 
leant an arm on the table and propped her cheek 
with her hand as she listened to the talk. Her arms 
were beautiful and the lace falling away revealed 
their beauty. Her eyes were fixed on Arundel. 
There were depths of tenderness in them. It came 
suddenly to Denys that Mrs. Aarons was still a beau- 
tiful woman, although she had reached middle-age. 

He had noticed before that she ate very little. 
She toyed with her food, saying enough to keep the 
conversation going, now and again addressing a 
remark to Denys, trying to draw him into the talk. 
He had time to observe that the tenderness of her 

f aze flowed over upon the young girl who sat in a 
ushed rapturous silence, a radiant little figure with 
satin-dark head bound with a fillet of roses. 


50 


AT THE OPERA 


There was something curious in Mrs. Aarons’s ex- 
pression as she looked at Miss Barton, something 
of pain as well as tender pleasure in the girl’s child- 
ish beauty. Somehow he did not wish to analyze it. 
He had a queer feeling that he had spied and seen 
something he should not have seen, and he put the 
thing away out of his mind quickly, as though he 
had done something to be ashamed of. 

In the carriage, as they drove to the theatre, he 
was aware that Hilary Arundel leaning back in the 
warm gloom, — they were late in going — had taken 
possession of the girl’s little hand, fondling it idly 
before dropping it as the carriage rolled into the 
blaze of electric light which flowed down Oxford 
Street. It offended his fastidiousness. He had an 
idea that Mrs. Aarons looked pale as she smiled at 
him in the sudden light, but discarded the idea as 
unfounded. It was only the blue glare of the arc 
lamps in the April evening that had made him im- 
agine such a thing. 

The Opera was “Tristan and Isolde.” Mrs. 
Aarons was lost in the music once it had begun. She 
and Denys sat in the front of the box. Hilary 
Arundel had managed so that he and Margery Bar- 
ton were in the back. 

There was a low whispering. Once Denys glanced 
behind and saw something that made him look has- 
tily away. Margery Barton, red as a rose, looking 
ecstatically happy but very shy, was listening to 
what the thin lips were saying almost into her little 
ear. 

Denys was offended, uneasy, at this open love- 
making. He supposed Mrs. Aarons was unaware 
of it as she sat in rapt contemplation of the stage. 
He was conscious all through the music of the love- 
making so close to him. He had a rigid disapproval 
of Hilary Arundel, because it was Hilary Arundel, 


AT THE OPERA 


5i 


for he was not censorious of other men. What did 
he mean by talking as he had done of Dawn Finu- 
cane? It annoyed Denys unreasonably, to think 
that they had met. No gentleman, he said to him- 
self bitterly, would have behaved as Arundel was 
behaving. 

With the interval Mr. Aarons came into the box. 
He had been in another part of the house. He 
nodded to Arundel, shook hands with Margery Bar- 
ton and sat down beside her. He began pointing 
out some of the notabilities. There was an end to 
the love-making, which had so offended Denys. 

“That is Lady Hebe Kinnersley over there,” he 
said, “and her daughters, Diana and Undine. She 
is an American and very rich. They like to do ec- 
centric things, so they come in halfway through 
“Tristan and Isolde.” They will probably talk 
through the next act and make their neighbors very 
uncomfortable. If someone hisses them they will 
be very much pleased. And over yonder is Mr. 
William Urquhart, — a great power in society and 
a very charming man. In the little box beside him 
is Lady Wilmut, who was Miss Sadie Conyers of 
the Pall Mall Theatre. She is a much more do- 
mesticated lady than the others. There is . . .” 

He was interrupted by Captain Arundel getting 
up and saying he must slip away before the curtain 
rose again. 

Denys made way for Mr. Aarons, who sat down 
in the chair beside his wife and at once began talking 
to her in a low confidential voice, Denys taking the 
chair Hilary Arundel had vacated. He made a bad 
substitute apparently, for Miss Barton did not seem 
inclined to talk. She rested her cheek on her hand 
and her beautiful little profile had a pensive air. 

The curtain was just about to rise when she moved 
from her position. She lifted her head and looked 


52 


AT THE OPERA 


between the heads of the two in the front of the box. 
Then she leant back again in her chair. He almost 
thought she shivered. Her head drooped wearily. 
Then the auditorium was dark. The curtain had 
risen. 

He was unaware of what had caused the change 
in her till later on. When the lights were on again 
he saw Hilary Arundel sitting in the opposite box 
beside one of the young ladies whom Mr. Aarons 
had indicated as the Misses Kinnersley. She was a 
beautiful girl dressed audaciously in a garment of 
tomato-red, mingled with black, and very decolletee. 

For a second she and Arundel were so absorbed 
in each other that apparently they did not discover 
that the lights were on. Denys wondered if Mar- 
gery Barton had seen. He had had a sudden rev- 
elation. It was she who had been in the boat with 
Arundel that Sunday afternoon at Homewood. Re- 
membering the thin triumphant laugh he detested 
Hilary Arundel. 


CHAPTER VI 

COMING HOME 

W ITH an old-fashioned courtesy Mr. Aarons saw 
Denys off at Euston. Mrs. Aarons had ap- 
peared at the early breakfast table but there was no 
sign of Miss Barton. 

“She is tired, poor child,” Mrs. Aarons said. 
“She is so sensitive to the music. ‘Tristan’ is cer- 
tainly exhausting.” 

She bade Denys an affectionate farewell, bidding 
him come again soon, and as they drove through the 
fresh newly watered morning streets, beautiful as 
London streets could be in those far away spring 
days with the new greenery and the bright window- 
boxes and flowers everywhere against the black 
house fronts, Mr. Aarons spoke of his wife’s liking 
for Denys as though he spoke of a queen’s favor. 
He was evidently pleased with Denys’s shy, enthusi- 
astic response, for he patted his hand as he spoke. 

“Ach, it is well bestowed. It is nearly always so 
with my Rachel — not quite always. What would 
you have? Two cannot always see alike no matter 
how close they are.” 

Again he turned and asked Denys what he thought 
of Hilary Arundel. Denys’s candid face must have 
answered him, for he went on without waiting for 
speech. 

“I do not like him,” he said. “He is not a gentle- 
man, though a man of good family. You saw last 
night. That poor little Margery! She is the doc- 
tor’s daughter at Homewood. My wife is very 
fond of her. I am sorry she has been thrown a good 
deal with Captain Arundel. When we are alone at 
53 


54 


COMING HOME 


Homewood, — I have always much to tell my Rachel 
— the young people are left to amuse each other. I 
fear she is in love with him, and he — is not in love. 
Strange are the ways of women. There may be 
more in him than I can see. My Rachel is a wise 
woman. I think perhaps he shows her another side. 
It was not pretty that he should go to that box last 
night and make love to another under the poor 
child’s eyes.” 

Denys could hardly believe in his good fortune as 
the train rushed off from Euston bearing him fast 
to the West. He had put away his misgivings about 
how Lord Leenane would take his intervention. 
After all, he had given him his confidence; he had 
made him agent over what was left of his Irish 
property. He could but be pleased. If only he, 
Denys, could pull Leenane out of the financial 
muddle he had got into, what might not happen yet? 
He did not dare to look his dreams in the face. Mr. 
Aarons had promised to finance him if the schemes 
for turning those bogs and arid places into gold were 
not as he said, wild-cat schemes. He, unaided, had 
reclaimed the Little Bog, to where the trees stood 
with their feet in the water. It had been a great 
undertaking for a boy. His father had thought it 
sheer insanity — but he had accomplished it. In his 
dream, as the Wild Irishman carried him on his way 
to the Island of Dreams, he saw a fair and fertile 
land studded with many white houses where was the 
marshy land and the black bog. Not that he wanted 
a country without the bogs. He loved the colored 
bogs and the great arch of the sky, the white, 

f olden-thatched cabins perched upon them like 
rooding wonderful birds, the peat smoke, indigo 
against the brown background; the peewit and the 
curlew crying, the wild geese high overhead, the soli- 
tary heron by the water pools. He was always lone- 


COMING HOME 


55 


some for the bogs when he was away from them; 
but he wanted habitations as well. There was too 
much bog. 

He was eager to be back, to begin the great work. 
He was much better equipped for it now than he had 
been as an ignorant sixteen-year-old boy. He had 
a memory, which made him suddenly red, of himself, 
standing under Dawn Finucane’s imperious beautiful 
young eyes, a yokel, he said to himself remembering 
the rough clothes and the touzled head, the un- 
washed look he must have presented to the dainty 
little lady with the golden curls falling to her 
shoulders from under the green velvet hunting cap. 
He had an uneasy idea that his nails must have been 
as black as jet. He had been growing up a peasant 
boy like the others, he a Fitzmaurice of Murrough, 
till she came, till her father had stretched out a 
hand to lift him from the earth. Could he ever do 
enough for the Finucanes? 

He looked up from his dreams and met the kind 
eyes of an old priest who was sitting opposite to 
him and was just laying aside his breviary as a thing 
finished with. The old man smiled. 

“You look as though the train was middling 
slow,” he said. “You’ll be going home to something 
pleasant?” 

“My father,” Denys replied and blushed, and the 
old priest noticed the blush and there came a roguish 
twinkle in his eye. 

“A father is a very good thing,” he said. “I’ve 
known a father to come before a mother even now 
and again, though not often 1” 

They talked. The simple history of the old man 
was very soon told. He was the parish priest of a 
wild mountain glen in Donegal. Somewhere far 
back in the troubles, the landlord had been shot and 
his son who had succeeded to the estates had never 


COMING HOME 


56 

forgiven the people. “I used to pray he’d be brought 
to a better mind to do his duty by them,” the old 
man said quietly. 

“And he hasn’t been? asked Denys. 

“Listen now and I’ll tell you. It all happened the 
funniest way you ever heard. I shouldn’t have mis- 
judged him. I thought he only wanted the rents 
and didn’t care a fig about the poor people. Well, 
my heart was broken with fighting the poverty of 
the place. We were always draggin’ the devil by 
the tail, if you ever heard that saying, and keeping 
only a slippery grasp of it at that, as the saying goes 
on. So my health broke down and the bishop sent 
me to Dublin for a holiday. I dreaded going away 
above all things, for on the only holiday I’d had 
before, I was just getting over the first trouble of my 
shyness when it was time to come back, and I hadn’t 
got more brazen in the seven years between. But 
the bishop put me under obedience and I went, and 
as good luck would have it I met the nicest fellow 
I ever laid eyes on in the train. You could see he 
was a soldier by the way he carried himself, and he 
was one of the tallest men I ever saw, with a kind, 
roguish face and a twinkle in his eye. He was very 
kind to me, and seeing I had nothing with me to eat 
— I never thought how long and cold the journey 
was going to be — he made me share his lunch and a 
nice lunch it was. Then he won me to talk, and be- 
fore ever I knew where I was, I was telling him about 
the Glen and the poor people and how his lordship 
kept away, and saying he wouldn’t do it if only he 
knew them; how harmless they were and how little 
to blame for what happened long ago. He listened 
with the greatest interest and then he asked me 
where I was going to stay in Dublin. I said I didn’t 
know at all ; I never stayed in Dublin before. May- 
be the Gresham; I’d heard talk of that hotel.” 


COMING HOME 


57 


“ ‘The Gresham’s very good,’ said he, ‘but you’d 
do better to come to my hotel. It will be cheaper 
on ye,’ says he. 

“So I gave in to him, and when we got to the big 
station he led me down the back way to where there 
was a fine carriage and pair standing; and the coach- 
man looked so grand that he might have been the 
Lord Mayor. I was a bit frightened about the 
hotel he was taking me to when I saw the carriage, 
and I was just trying to explain that I wanted a 
quiet cheap place when we drew up at the door of 
a big house. When the door was opened by a grand 
fellow in livery, the prettiest young lady I ever saw 
came running down the stairs and threw her arms 
round the big man’s neck though he had to stoop to 
let her do it. And there was a darling little girl 
like a fairy with a yellow head and a green velvet 
dress, coming down the big stairs, holding on to the 
banisters. I was frightened when I saw the place — 
it was so grand, the glowing red walls and the 
statues and the flowers everywhere, and the warm 
sweet smell of it all. The Bishop’s Palace was a 
poor place beside it. But I thought to put out my 
hand and steady the little fairy girl for she didn’t 
seem too sure on her feet. And the little thing 
laughed up in my face, — something most enchanting. 

“Then the big gentleman thought of me standing 
there, and ‘Esme my dear,’ says he, ‘I want to intro- 
duce you to Father Michael Flannery, the parish 
priest of Glenistioge. He’s been telling me a lot 
about the Glen and the people, and he’s brought me 
to a sense of my duty. It wasn’t your fault I didn’t 
come to it long ago.’ 

“And now who do you think the gentleman was 
but Lord Inistioge himself? The bishop said after- 
wards that it was plain to be seen Who had sent me 
on that journey, and brought his lordship there as 


COMING HOME 


J* 

well, and put us travelling together, for the bishop 
had placed me under obedience to travel first class, 
a thing I’d never have thought of doing. Wasn’t 
it all too wonderful?” 

Denys agreed that it was all too wonderful. 

“The Glen has another face on it now that the 
people and his lordship have made up the quarrel. 
Sure it was one-sided always. There isn’t a summer 
in it that himself and her ladyship and the wee col- 
leen don’t spend a week with me, — for all that 
there’s a grand hotel at the head of the Glen.” 

With such talk the journey was beguiled. 

At Chester Father Flannery bought the Free- 
man’s Journal. Denys was well provided with liter- 
ature. Now and again he looked across with a cer- 
tain tender amusement at the priest’s simple benig- 
nant old face, wearing a pair of large spectacles with 
tortoise-shell frames which he had explained were 
a gift from Lord Inistioge. “They don’t add to my 
beauty,” he had said humorously as he put them 
on, “but they’re real handy to see with.” 

His finger as he read the papers extended on his 
knee went travelling along the lines of print. He 
seemed to find a deal to interest him in the Free- 
man’s Journal. Denys had just noticed that having 
read the paper proper right through he had begun 
on the back page advertisements, before the very 
blue eyes looked up over the disfiguring spectacles. 

“This ’ll be your part o’ the world,” he said. 
“There’s going to be an auction there. Castle Clo- 
gher, Lord Leenane’s place. It’ll be a fine auction. 
After the races I like an auction. I’d go nearly any 
distance for a good one. It’s grand for amusement 
to pick up a bargain.” 

He was launching off into further reminiscences 
when Denys leant across and took the paper. Yes; 
there it was staring at him from the printed sheet. 
Furniture and effects, indoor and outdoor, at Castle 


COMING HOME 


59 


Clogher, Dunmoore Co., Galway. Leenane had 
been very quick about it. He had not given his new 
agent much of a chance. 

He read through the advertisement carefully 
before restoring the paper to its owner. It was 
what the auctioneer called a residue auction. Noth- 
ing of any great value. But he would have liked to 
keep the place intact for Dawn’s sake, and he felt 
disappointed and annoyed about Leenane’s haste 
to sell. 

Father Flannery was saying that he liked a resi- 
due auction. Nobody ever knew what luck there 
might be in it. A priest he knew had picked up a 
Waterford glass bowl in which someone had been 
growing bulbs in the potting shed at a residue auc- 
tion. It was grimed over in earth so that it didn’t 
look like glass at all, only Father Tracey was clever 
enough to discern it. 

Somewhere in the Midlands, Denys had had a 
queer fancy that by a carriage window of a fast train 
going in the opposite direction he had caught a 
glimpse of Dawn’s young face. His heart had 
leaped at the fancy, but he had dismissed it as a 
fancy. The trains had passed each other at such 
speed that recognition would have been practically 
impossible. What had come to him that he was 
seeing Dawn Finucane everywhere. 

Still, — it was just possible they had passed each 
other. He might have missed them by a few hours. 
Lord Leenane was always an erratic person. He 
had talked of Bath and Cheltenham. It was just 
as likely that he would go off travelling somewhere, 
quite beyond reach of his newly appointed agent. 
^ 1 i himself for the time he had de- 



The receipt in full from Simon 


Aarons which he carried in the breast pocket of his 
coat became a dull thing from what it had been. 
When he reached Drum S^tion the placards 


6 o 


COMING HOME 


stared at him from the walls. He had come down 
by the night mail and they were still the small hours 
when he emerged from the station to find his father 
patiently waiting with the little mare, Lady’s sister, 
in the dogcart. Pat Fitzmaurice’s grey head nodded 
a little when Denys first caught sight of him and the 
sight gave the son a certain pang. His father had 
been doing much more of late than he need have 
done if his son had gone on in his footsteps. How- 
ever, he was alert as soon as Denys hailed him. 
Mick McBride, the porter, a very friendly person, 
had come out from the station carrying a swinging 
lantern in one hand and Denys’s portmanteau in the 
other. The light of the lantern had shown up the 
flaring auction posters. 

“It’s good to have you back, boy,” said his father. 
“It seemed like a month of Sundays that you were 
away. All is going well. You’ve just missed Lord 
Leenane. He called in to say goodbye on Sunday 
and Miss Dawn with him. He said he hoped to see 
you in London. They left that night.” 

So it was Dawn he had seen, her cheek of apple- 
blossom resting pensively in her little hand. He 
felt blank disappointment but he did not reveal it 
to the old man as he gathered up the reins, and the 
little mare, whose mouth was as soft as silk, went 
off in a gentle rush between the scented hedgerows. 
Day was just showing above the mountains. The 
first birds were stirring in the nests. The morning 
world was wearing the strange lonely aloof look of 
early morning, something of still life, a painted pic- 
ture, not a thing that lived. 

“The furniture of Clogher is up for auction,” Pat 
Fitzmaurice went on, giving the news. “George 
Armstrong, the Galway solicitor has charge of it and 
Patsy Hynes is selling. I wonder he didn’t wait 
till you came home, he having made you the agent. 


COMING HOME 


61 


There’ll be nothing in it — the agency I mean. He’ll 
have to sell what’s left him. They say all that’s 
good in the house is gone.” 

Plainly the father was a little offended, thinking 
his son ill-treated. What was George Armstrong, 
only a small attorney? — and his father a policeman? 
The old man nodded again while he talked, and 
pulled himself up with a jerk, explaining that yes- 
terday was Moy Fair and he was up at three in the 
morning as he had a few bullocks there. They had 
done very well. It was a great year. If things went 
on as they were going it would be an early year. 

“Too bad,” said Denys, “that you should have 
come to meet me. I meant to have taken a car from 
the Railway Hotel.” 

“And why would you do that, having a car of 
your own?” his father asked, and added, “Wouldn’t 
I go any distance for a sight of your face, lad?” 

Denys glanced affectionately at the rosy weather- 
beaten face, rather unwontedly pale because there 
had been no time for shaving before the late start. 
The chilly light of early morning fell upon it, the 
good firm mouth, the short straight nose, the blue 
eyes under their bushy eyebrows, furrowed about 
with lines and wrinkles. His father had not asked 
him what he had done with the two thousand pounds 
he had taken away with him, which represented the 
bulk of the savings of a laborious lifetime. 

“It is good to come home to you, Father,” he 
said and added: “I have brought you back a thou- 
sand pounds. The other thousand ...” 

“Did I ask you about the money?” said Patrick 
Fitzmaurice, with a voice of scorn. “It’s glad I am 
to see you coming home whether there’s money in 
it or not.” 


CHAPTER VII 

THE AUCTION 


I T WAS on a wet May evening when Denys Fitz- 
maurice accompanied Mr. George Armstrong 
and Hynes the auctioneer on an inspection of Castle 
Clogher. It was the day before the auction. The 
house was as dark as an old house of narrow win- 
dows, part castellated, can be of a wet May evening, 
when the shadows of heavy clouds go stealing up the 
walls, and the wet ivy shivers at every window. The 
corners out of range of the windows were so obscure 
that one had to peer closely to see their contents. 

“I hope it will be better weather than this to- 
morrow,” said George Armstrong, a small man with 
a cute face, deeply sunk reddish eyes and side whis- 
kers. He looked as though he ought to be chewing 
a straw, and his looks did not belie him, for he was 
a good judge of a horse and well known on every 
race-course in Ireland. “If we haven’t got better 
light you’ll want the lamps, Mr. Hynes, for the 
people to see the things.” 

“What would be the matter with the weather on 
a May morning? All the same it might be as well 
they didn’t,” Mr. Hynes said cynically. “There 
isn’t much in it. I’ve brought in a lot of old things 
from the lofts over the stables. The horse-hair of 
some of the chairs is gone to maggots; I should 
think, judging by the holes, there isn’t a bed in the 
house that’s not worm-eaten.” 

“There are some beautiful wardrobes,” Mr. 
Armstrong said, lingering over the adjective as 
though he loved it. 

“Are you thinkin’ of gettin’ married, Mr. Arm- 
62 


THE AUCTION 63 

strong?” Mr. Hynes asked jocularly. “They’d 
make lovely presses for the mistress’ trousseau.” 

George Armstrong laughed. He was a con- 
firmed bachelor. 

“Mrs. Hynes and the young ladies might like one 
apiece,” he answered. “The ones with the glass 
doors, where they could see their pretty faces.” 

Mrs. Hynes was notoriously plain-featured — she 
had brought her husband three thousand pounds — 
and her daughters favored her. Hynes himself was 
a ruddy big man with a rollicking eye, without illu- 
sions on the subject of his feminine belongings. 

“Their looks won’t put their souls in danger,” he 
said, “but they’re hard workin’ girls. They’d make 
grand farmers’ wives so they would. There’s noth- 
ing they aren’t up to from calves to bees and they’re 
very husky. The purty ones are content to be more 
ignorant.” 

Denys did not join in the rough rallying talk. 
To him the dim rooms with the piled up furniture 
brought a sense of desolation. 

“Is there anything any good in it at all, Patsy?” 
Mr. Armstrong asked. 

“Divil a much. There are some chairs David 
Strong took a fancy to. He says they’re apple- 
white, or something like that. All I know is the 
stuffin’ is cornin’ out of them and they’re destroyed 
with damp. They were in an ould coach-house these 
many years back. Not much apple that I could see 
about them nor white either. I promised David a 
short knock. He’s a decent fellow.” 

“What is that?” asked Denys, unearthing some- 
thing from behind an old hip-bath and a clothes 
horse. 

“That’s her ladyship’s harp. I wonder his lord- 
ship left it. I heard her once playin’ on it in the 
Town Hall at Galway. Her arms were lovely on it 


6 4 


THE AUCTION 


and her hands. She had as pretty a pair of hands as 
ever I saw in a woman. I noticed Miss Dawn had 
the same, as she stood leanin’ on the back of her 
father’s chair when him and me were talkin’ about 
the auction. Now I come to think of it, we didn’t 
talk much about the same auction. We began on it 
and then we fell to talkin’ of old times. He didn’t 
mean to go so soon then, but he took a kind of a 
dislike to seein’ the walls placarded with the posters 
and off he went.” 

“Buy in the harp for me,” said Denys. 

“Very well, Mr. Fitzmaurice. What price?” 

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Whatever price it goes 
to.” 

It was not the last by many of the things Mr. 
Hynes was bidden to buy in for Mr. Fitzmaurice. 
He commented on it humorously afterwards to 
George Armstrong, as they sat over a hastily lit 
turf fire in the Imperial Hotel at Drum, a hostelry 
which did not at all live up to its high sounding title. 

“Think of it!” he said. “Pat Fitzmaurice’s little 
boy! ‘Buy it in for me, Mr. Hynes!’ he says. Me- 
self and Pat sat on the same form at the Christian 
Brothers’ School below in John Street. Whatever 
scholarship ayther of us has, he got there. Ould 
Mrs. Fitzmaurice was alive then and she kept Pat 
very tidy, not like me that always had the seat out 
of me breeches from slidin’ down the slope in the 
Long Field. And here’s Pat’s boy sayin’ with a 
lovely English accent : ‘Please buy it in for me, Mr. 
Hynes.’ ” 

Mr. Hynes gave an amazing attempt at mimicry 
of Denys’s speech. 

“He’s blown up with pride, that’s what he is,” 
said Mr. Armstrong gloomily — “through Leenane 
givin’ him the agency. Agent over nothing. I 


THE AUCTION 65 

thank you. If it was to be an agency at all it ought 
to be a legal man with a legal mind that had it.” 

“Like yourself, George,” said Mr. Hynes. 

“I don’t know that it would be worth my while 
takin’ it. Still, I’ve done a bit for Leenane before 
now. But sure, what’s the good of talkin’? Lee- 
nane’s broke out of it. The whipper-snapper won’t 
get much from th’ agency. I wonder where he buys 
his clothes.” 

“I dunno,” said Mr. Hynes thoughtfully. “They 
don’t smack of Drum somehow. Did ye mind, 
George, that he’s very bent on buyin’ in all that be- 
longed to the young lady or might belong to her.” 

Mr. Armstrong stared thoughtfully at Mr. Hynes 
for a few seconds. Then he hit him a resounding 
thwack on the knee. 

“You’re the divil, Hynes,” said he. “It didn’t 
occur to me. Well, if that doesn’t bang Banagher 
and Banagher bangs the divil. Pat Fitzmaurice’s 
son and Lord Leenane’s daughter. It comes from 
callin’ the boy be th’ outlandish name of Denys. 
D-e-n-y-s, if ye plase. Wasn’t plain Dinny good 
enough?” 

He was taken with such a fit of scornful laughter 
that he all but choked and had to be beaten violently 
on the back by Mr. Hynes before he could get his 
breath. 

“Well, I think I’ll go to bed after that,” he said 
recovering himself. “I’m not like to hear better for 
many a long day. I’ll be up early in the mornin’ to 
help you to put out the last o’ the things. I wish 
the woman here would learn to build a turf fire and 
let the Intermediate Education alone. She’s above 
her business, that’s what she is. But sure what 
matters if the food’s poison when she has got the 
silver medal for English Literature in the Second 
Grade!” 


66 


THE AUCTION 


“One way or another Boards are the curse of 
Ireland,” Mr. Hynes said and yawned. “You’d 
know a congested fellow a mile off by the swagger 
of him, and an Irish Light’s near as bad, let alone 
a Fishery.” 

Meanwhile Denys, blissfully unconscious of the 
profanation of his sacred things, sat by his own fire- 
side with his father, telling him over a pipe of all 
the strange things that had happened during his 
London visit. Pat Fitzmaurice had gone to Dublin 
once or twice for the Horse Show or a race meeting. 
Those occasions were the purple patches in his life. 
But to travel outside the Four Seas of Ireland was 
beyond his wildest dreams. He had accepted plac- 
idly the use Denys had made of his thousand pounds. 
“Sure it will all be yours one day, boy,” he had said. 
Equally he was satisfied when Denys gave him a 
minute account of the articles he had bidden Mr. 
Hynes buy in for him at the Auction. Lord Lee- 
nane won’t see you at the loss of the money if he 
can pay it, and if he doesn’t want the things them- 
selves, Patsy Hynes will see you don’t get too bad a 
bargain of them. Him and me were at school to- 
gether and he’s a great man for givin’ his friends a 
short knock, let alone that he puts the people in 
such a good temper that he rises no disputes. I 
think I’ll take a day off and come over with you to- 
morrow, lad. It’ll be a holiday for me and a pleas- 
ant one to be with you, let alone the auction.” 

“Do !” said Denys. “You take too few holidays.” 

“I got in the habit of workin’ when you were 
away from me. I hardly sat down to read my Free- 
man even. It was so lonesome in the house without 
you, an’ old Rory kept turnin’ an eye on me now 
and again askin’ me when you’d be home. Oh in- 
deed, it was a lonely time when you were away.” 

“Oh,” said Denys, with a pang he often felt over 
his father, “I was a selfish brute to stay so long 


THE AUCTION 67 

away.” He stopped to caress Rory’s fast whitening 
muzzle. 

“Look what it has made of you !” said Pat Fitz- 
Maurice, with naive pride in his son. “Would I 
have had you back a day sooner if I could? ’Twas 
no wonder they were makin’ much of you in 
London.” 

It was a twenty minutes’ drive from Murrough 
Farm to Castle Clogher across the mountains and 
by the Lakes, and, leaving at half-past eleven with 
the little mare between the shafts, they counted on 
being in good time for the auction which was to 
begin at twelve. They had not counted on Mrs. 
Nestor, at the level crossing, having mislaid the key 
of the gate, which was padlocked against them. 

When they had at last attracted Mrs. Nestor’s 
attention, which was not till Denys had climbed the 
gate and gone in at the low door of her little house, 
she was profuse in her apologies. “She didn’t know 
what was the matter with that ould key. It was for- 
ever slippin’ through her pocket or hiding itself away 
in the last place you’d look for it. Anyhow it was 
gone these three days. The last place she found 
it when she missed it was in the goat’s shed, but it 
wasn’t there now. Anyhow she hoped the gentle- 
men would forgive her. The same ould key was a 
great inconvanience to the travellin’ public.” 

There was nothing for them to do but to turn 
back and make a detour of some five Irish miles. 
Denys was grimly amused, while his father expati- 
ated on the impudence of the railways in taking the 
public road and leaving only a bothered old woman 
to look after the gates. 

“If it isn’t one thing it’s another,” he said. “The 
mail train took the gates with her on the front of 
the engine till she stopped at the next station, one 
night last week. And the best of it was, the pas- 
sengers never knew a thing about it, It was the 


68 THE AUCTION 

guard was tellin’ Mikie Morrissey an he told it to 

^ _ >» 
me. 

In the result the auction was well on its way when 
the Fitzmaurices, father and son, arrived. They 
left the mare, with her nosebag on, in charge of 
somebody’s coachman, and entered the hall of the 
house — a capacious hall with an inner door which 
had a beautiful screen and fanlight. The hall and 
staircase were crowded with small boys, despite the 
fact that a shilling to be returned to purchasers was 
charged for entrance. Apparently, the person who 
was to collect the shillings had grown tired of his 
task and gone away. 

The small boys were eager to impart information. 

‘‘He’s sellin’ in the drawin’room now. You’ll 
have no chance of gettin’ in unless you was to walk 
in on the people’s heads.” 

“He might be shovin’.” 

“Try the windy, sir! He’s standin’ up on the 
middle windy. I’ll show you where he is !” 

From the shower of advice that rained upon him, 
Denys selected what seemed the best. The throng 
of people had flowed out into the hall, where late 
arrivals were standing tiptoe, looking over each 
other’s shoulders in a vain attempt to see what was 
going on in the room. Mr. Hynes’s strident voice 
came out into the hall. 

“Make way for the lady that wants to buy the 
room. Well, ma’am, what’s your bid for the chan- 
delier. Seven-and-six. It cost a hundred pounds. 
Not Waterford, but look at the lovely shiny drops 
of it. A pound, thank you. Two pounds. We 
won’t take any shillin’ bids. It’s in your catalogues 
if you only take the trouble of readin’ them.” 

A little woman with a very red face forced herself 
through the crowd out into the hall. Denys had 
been thinking of the window, but he saw his chance 


THE AUCTION 


69 

and before the crowd had closed up again he was a 
few feet beyond the doorway, with the complaints 
of the red-faced woman who was apparently the 
bidder of seven and sixpence for the chandelier fol- 
lowing him.” 

“I didn’t come here to be insulted by Patsy 
Hynes,” she said, and her voice lifted. “Come 
home, John Morris, and don’t be wastin’ your time 
at this auction. There’ll be no bargains here to-day, 
I can tell you. There’s no fairity in it, so there 
isn’t.” 

The crowd tittered and a very big man, who was 
apparently John Morris and the husband of the 
little woman, remarked across the massed heads : 

“Women’ll talk. There’s no use tryin’ to hinder 
them.” 

The chandelier fell at seven pounds ten, and the 
auctioneer passed on to the pictures. There had 
been no pictures when Denys went over the house 
except some deplorable things, daubs of one kind or 
another, school-girl drawings, shiny, highly-colored 
prints from Christmas numbers, which were scat- 
tered through the bedrooms. It was none of these 
the auctioneer was selling. His assistant was hold- 
ing up to public view some old oil sea paintings and 
landscapes, the frames broken, the colors cracked. 
A lady seated in an armchair might be Mrs. Met- 
calfe. He was not sure, but he bought it. He had 
liked Mrs. Metcalfe very much at their first and 
only meeting. It fell to him for a few shillings: 
the faded pretty thing in the oval frame made no 
appeal to the crowd. 

The next lot was a couple of crayon drawings. 

“A queer thing,” said one man to another, “that 
Leenane should sell his mother’s pictures ! Oh yes, 
the Dowager was a good bit of an artist. Used to 
exhibit in London I heard.” 


70 


THE AUCTION 


Denys caught the speech and bought the pictures. 
He was almost suffocated where he stood. A man 
in front had his elbow somewhere between Denys’s 
ribs, and the folded arms of a tall person behind 
were crossed on his shoulders. In the constrained 
attitude he stood and bought the Dowager’s pic- 
tures, giving very little for them, since they did not 
interest the crowd. 

Presently something happened of a more exciting 
character. A pair of oval portraits in oil, of ladies 
was put up — and a little yellow, hook-nosed dirty 
man near the door started with a bid of five pounds. 

“That’s Levi from Westport,” someone said be- 
hind Denys; “he’s the only dealer in it. The Dublin 
men wouldn’t be bothered cornin’ down here, let 
alone that there’s a great auction at Bennett’s to- 
day — Lord Rosslare’s: he was a great collector.” 

Denys craned his neck and bid ten pounds for the 
portraits. The Jew went to fifteen. Twenty — 
twenty-five — twenty-six. The crowd began to get 
excited. One or two made rash bids. A man who 
was a shopkeeper in Drum bid thirty pounds: and 
a voice in the crowd asked him sarcastically how he’d 
face the Missus when he went home with the story 
that he’d spent thirty pounds on a couple of pictures. 
Thirty-five — forty — forty-five. The blood had got 
into Denys’s head. He was quite prepared to go 
on bidding against the Jew, who apparently was not 
a popular person, for the crowd was imploring 
Denys to go on, and some of the more excited were 
calling out that the tall young gentleman’s was the 
the last bid and should be taken. 

Fifty pounds. It was Denys’s bid. The crowd 
about the door swayed. There was a choking, gur- 
gling sound. Someone fainted perhaps. No won- 
der: the room was stifling. 


THE AUCTION 


7i 


The auctioneer’s hammer fell. “Fifty pounds for 
the pictures: Mr. Fitzmaurice’s bid.” The pictures 
were whisked away and the next lot came up. 

A thick Semitic voice began to protest after a 
time — Mr. Levi’s apparently. Mr. Levi had had 
a cold and was choking with a cough. The pictures 
should be put up again. He had not stopped bid- 
ding, not at all, but an accursed boy — “aggursed” 
he called it — had dealt him a blow in his “shest,” he 
had seen the stars dance before him, and when he 
“regovered” the pictures were sold. 

The crowd only roared with laughter, and Mr. 
Hynes went on as if he had not heard. 

By the end of the day Denys found himself the 
possessor of many pictures, besides Lady Leenane’s 
harp, a nursery screen covered with pictures, which 
he imagined Dawn’s little fingers having traced in 
her baby days, a child’s chair — over the last two 
purchases the crowd had roared with laughter — a 
lady’s workbox, a little papier mache writing desk, 
a Sheraton looking glass, all of which might or 
might not have had associations with Dawn Finu- 
cane. 

When he went up to pay for his purchases Mr. 
Hynes shook him warmly by the hand. 

“If I were you, Mr. Fitzmaurice,” he said, taking 
him aside, “I’d carry off your fifty-pounds’ worth 
to-night. It’s too valuable to be left lyin’ about. I 
was glad you got them — your father and I were at 
the Christian Brothers’ Schools together as I think 
I informed you yesterday. Beside I owed Levi a 
grudge. He’s always givin’ trouble, refusin’ to pay 
and wantin’ lots put up again. Let alone that I’d 
rather have a Christian than a Jew any day.” 

“Thank you very much,” said Denys. “I’ll take 
the pictures. By the way, I didn’t see them yester- 
day when I was going over the house.” 


72 


THE AUCTION 


‘‘You didn’t. They were stacked together in a 
lumber room at the top of the house. We only 
cleared it this mornin’. The dust and cobwebs were 
a caution. It’s a good many years since a sweepin’ 
brush and duster were in that room. Well, goodbye, 
Mr. Fitzmaurice. You’ll call in and see us when 
next in Drum. Mrs. Hynes and the girls ’ll be de- 
lighted. Pot luck any day you like to come, and 
welcome.” 

Denys assured him that he would be delighted to 
meet Mrs. and the Misses Hynes, and went out with 
the pictures under his arm to where his father was 
standing by the mare’s head, discussing the auction 
prices. His face lightened as he saw Denys: no 
fear of reproaches there, for his extravagance. 

“Is that your fifty pounds’ worth?” he asked 
cheerfully. “Quite right, lad to take it away. I’ve 
been settling with a man here from Athavarra to 
carry the rest when the auction’s over. You’ll be 
buyin’ more, maybe to-morrow.” 

A boy plucked at Denys’s coat as he was putting 
the pictures carefully into the “well” of the car. 

“Tip us a shillin,’ sir,” he said, “I choked the Jew 
for you.” 

“You rascal!” said Denys, looking round at the 
small foxy-faced urchin. “May I ask why you did 
that, and why you expect me to reward you for your 
evil doings?” 

“I liked the looks o’ ye,” said the boy grinning; 
“an’ I wasn’t goin’ to have ye bet be a Jew. That 
fellow would ha’ gone on till the Day of Judgmint. 
Well, if ye won’t tip me a shillin’ for that, tip it 
because I was the boy that towld ye to get in be 
the windy.” 

Denys laughed and tossed the boy half a crown. 


CHAPTER VIII 

THE EXPERT 

T N His own room at home Denys played what his 
father would have called “antics” with the pic- 
tures. It was not the best room for the purpose, 
being low-ceiled and dark under the thatch, the 
little windows deep-set in the thick walls. Over- 
night he had examined his purchases carefully and 
his pulses had quickened for what he saw and sus- 
pected. Now in the morning light he was even more 
excited. He did not know enough to be sure, but 
he believed the pictures to be good. 

One represented an old lady sitting in a high- 
backed armchair, her white head against the rich 
embroidery of the cushions. Her whiteness and 
frailness were almost unearthly by contrast with the 
deep color. She leant forward a little and her eyes 
looked at you living, out of the spirited gracious old 
face. Beside her on a table of deep red mahogany 
which took the light like a mirror, was a tall blue 
jar of Madonna lilies. 

The second portrait was of a young lady wearing 
a dress of deep blue velvet with a collar of exquisite 
old lace. Her curling auburn hair was dressed high 
above her candid forehead; the irregular, beautifully 
tinted face and the blue eyes wore an expression of 
boyish gaiety and high-heartedness. This too was 
a portrait of character. The painting of the fabrics, 
the heavy grey silk of the old lady’s dress, the vel- 
vet and lace of the young lady’s were triumphantly 
good. In the clear, cold, morning light the blue of 
the velvet glowed like a sapphire. 

73 


74 


THE EXPERT 


Having set the two portraits against a wall where 
the north light fell on them Denys stood back and 
stared at his new possessions. He wished Waring 
were near at hand to give him advice. Waring who 
had been with him at Wolvercote and Oxford and 
been mad on pictures. He had talked a deal on art 
to a not always attentive ear. He had painted 
queer fantastic pictures himself, and he was a wizard 
at the piano, playing all the great music he had ever 
heard. But Waring was somewhere in the Balkans 
and Denys did not know whom else to go to. The 
velvety brown eyes, with their deep look of peace, 
would have decided at once that the paintings were 
good. 

Waring had dragged Denys to various picture 
galleries and sales when they had spent a week to- 
gether in London one Easter. Perhaps the inatten- 
tive listener and gazer had absorbed more than he 
knew. The extraordinary graciousness and dignity 
of the portraits so laid hold upon Denys, that he 
felt for a moment that he must keep them for his 
own delight. 

He locked them away carefully before he left the 
house and took the key of his room in his pocket. 
He drove alone to the auction, as it was market day 
in Drum, where he left his father with the intention 
of picking him up later in the day. 

He was entering the house when he knocked up 
against the man he wanted to see, George Arm- 
strong. They were both early arrivals. 

“What is this I hear?” Mr. Armstrong said face- 
tiously. “They are telling me you wouldn’t let 
anybody get what they wanted yesterday, that you’re 
the most unpopular man with the old women in the 
county to-day. That was a great trick you played 
on Levi. They’re telling me you bribed a young 
divil of a boy to knock the wind out of the poor 


THE EXPERT 


75 


man while you bought in what you fancied. He 
swears he’ll take the law agin’ Patsy Hynes and 
break the sale.” 

Denys waved away the badinage. 

“I didn’t see those pictures the day we went round 
the house.” 

“For a good reason: they weren’t there. Some 
of Hynes’s people rooted them out of a forgotten 
lumber room. Patsy’s very strong on his commis- 
sion, although he’ll give a short knock to a friend 
now and again, as he did to yourself yesterday. I 
was that bad with the lumbago after the wet day on 
Tuesday, I couldn’t get over. If I’d been here I 
wouldn’t have let the Dowager’s pictures be sold. 
I’m sure Leenane wouldn’t have wished it. I’m glad 
you bought them. You’ll let him have them back 
if he wants them?” 

“I bought them for that purpose. Tell me, Mr. 
Armstrong, do you know anything about the pic- 
tures, the pair I bought for fifty pounds?” 

Armstrong’s face deepened into wrinkles of cun- 
ning humor. 

“Ye’ll make your fortune out o’ them,” he said. 
“Then ye needn’t be bothered with an agency where 
there’s no business.” 

“Mr. Levi thought the pictures good.” 

“He did. So that’s what put you on to them. 
That and the excitement of the biddin’. It’s worse 
than horse racin’. There was a poor divil yesterday 
bought five hundred jam pots at the end o’ the day 
for tuppence a-piece, and daren’t go home to tell his 
wife. He was beggin’ Patsy Hynes, I hear, to put 
them up again this mornin’. Patsy for the joke said 
he’d never consent to deprive him of his bargain. 
But he’ll do it. He’s a reel good-natured man.” 

There was not much to see at the auction but the 
country people bidding against each other frantically 


THE EXPERT 


76 

for things they had no use for, and articles of furni- 
ture they could not possibly get into their houses. It 
would have made a wonderful picture for a genre 
painter, he thought, as he gazed over the excited 
covetous, amused, cynical faces. 

He was back in Drum by three o’clock, much 
earlier than his father had expected to see him, and 
startled him with the tidings that he meant to go up 
to Dublin by the night mail on his way to London, 
with the paintings. For the first time Pat Fitzmaur- 
ice looked a little puzzled and bewildered. 

“You won’t be takin’ to goin’ hither an’ over like 
a Willy the Wisp and never settlin’?” he asked 
anxiously. 

“No, indeed, Father,” Denys assured him earn- 
estly. “I shall settle down with you after this. 
There is no place I love better than the place where 
you are.” 

“Ah, that’s kindly said, boy,” the old man re- 
turned with a gratified look. “Still, for all that, I 
don’t know that the Murrough Farm will ever con- 
tent you any more. I’m not grudgin’ you all his 
lordship did for you. Still I couldn’t expect to get 
back my boy, that used to be happy with old Rory, 
wanderin’ the fields or dreamin’ on a sunny bank, 
or under a wall if the wind was cold.” 

“Before I drained the Little Bog. I was a lazy 
young dog in those days.” 

“ ’Twas only that you were dreamin’ your dreams. 
Your mother had the second sight. You saw more 
than we thought. I’m very proud of you, Denys, 
but I don’t know that ever I was happier than when 
ye were young and careless and I grumblin’ at ye. 
My tongue might be bitter but my heart was soft 
to ye.” 

As they drove home Denys explained to his father 
his suspicions about the pictures, that they were 
something really good and valuable which had been 


THE EXPERT 


77 


laid away and forgotten as time passed. He had 
been unable to persuade that cynic, George Arm- 
strong, that the pictures could have any value. 

“There isn’t a thing in it that isn’t an old daub,” 
Armstrong had said decisively. “Haven’t I been 
doin’ business for the Leenanes these five and thirty 
years, and my father before me? Is it likely that if 
there was anything any good I wouldn’t know about 
it? If it was for a spec you bought them old things 
you’ll be done in the eye, my boy.” 

“Them Armstrongs had always too much ould chat 
out of them,” Pat Fitzmaurice said, in affront, when 
this was repeated to him. “But sure there’s no use 
mindin’ George Armstrong. He has coarse ways 
with him, an’ as the sayin’ is : ‘What can you expect 
from a pig but a grunt.’ ” 

Denys spent a couple of hours of the afternoon in 
making the pictures as safe as possible between 
boards wrapped in canvas. He was rather pleased 
with his handiwork when he had it done, and carried 
down the workmanlike parcel he had made of it to 
show to his father, who pronounced it very neatly 
done. 

“As Maggie was sayin’,” he said, — Maggie was 
the old housekeeper who had been nurse to Denys 
when he was a baby — “ ‘You’ve taken no harm from 
being a gentleman’.” 

He sat and smoked his pipe talking quietly while 
Denys made a substantial meat tea, which might be 
his last meal before breakfast next morning, and his 
blue eyes beamed approval on his son. 

“If it was to be you made a bit on the pictures, 
I’m not saying you will — fifty pounds was a lot to 
give for them — what would you do with it?” he 
asked presently. 

“My idea is if the pictures have value, to hand 
them over to Lord Leenane. I am his agent and I 
bought them in for him, not for myself. If they 


78 


THE EXPERT 


are not valuable and he does not want them, they 
would look very nice on that wall there.” 

“You’ll never make a business man, Denys,” the 
father said, with a long suck at his pipe. “You’re 
too good-natured.” 

“You shall see,” Denys answered. “Wait till I 
begin to drain the Big Bog, out beyond the trees that 
used to stand with their feet in the water and stand 
now on solid ground.” 

“Glory be to goodness, what are you thinking of, 
boy? Drain the Big Bog! Why it is a couple of 
miles square, runnin’ along to the foot o’ the moun- 
tains !” 

“With the Murrough River, a fine natural drain, 
running right through it. The river wants cleaning 
up.” 

Pat Fitzmaurice looked at his son as though he 
thought much learning had made him mad. “An’ 
what would the poor people do for their little turf 
banks?” he asked. 

It was time for Denys to be off, so he postponed 
the discussion to a future day. His father drove 
him to the station. As his train ran out, he caught 
sight of the little mare mounting the hill from the 
station. He thought his father’s figure on the side 
of the car had a lonely, dejected air. 

“I shall leave him no more,” he said to himself. 
“Where I go he goes. But, since he would hate to 
leave Murrough, it is a good thing I am going to 
find plenty to do there.” 

He crossed to Holyhead by the morning boat. 
All through the long journey he kept the case with 
the pictures constantly under his observation. They 
might be, as George Armstrong had said, daubs; on 
the other hand they might have value. Anyhow, 
they were not his, but in his keeping; he must see 
that no harm befell them. 


THE EXPERT 


79 


He slept at the hotel with door locked, and car- 
ried the parcel to the dining room where he break- 
fasted. He himself placed it in the hansom which 
awaited him. It was not quite ten o’clock when he 
arrived at the famous salesrooms of Messrs. Millar, 
Hardy and Hodge. The sweepers had been water- 
ing the streets and the pavements were yet sprinkled. 
The streets were full of hurrying people on their 
way to business, and the shops were but in process of 
window dressing. There was a feeling as of early 
morning freshness about it all. 

The young man at Millar, Hardy and Hodge’s, 
who was just taking off his hat, received Denys with 
an air of offence which deepened when the latter 
asked to see one of the principals. 

“Mr. Hodge may be in by eleven o’clock,” he 
said; “Mr. Hardy is in Rome; young Mr. Millar is 
still at Eton. There are several people to see here 
before you reach the principals.” 

“I shall wait for Mr. Hodge,” Denys replied 
calmly. 

“Oh ! I suppose you know your own business best. 
Mr. Hodge only sees important clients. Don’t 
mind my telling you.” 

“I may be an important client,” said Denys. “I’ve 
a couple of pictures to show him. I’ve heard he’s 
an expert.” 

“An expert! Why he discovered the Vasari 
forgery when all the experts of Europe pronounced 
it genuine. If all the people who thought they had 
‘finds’ in the way of pictures or curios were to see 
Mr. Hodge there’d have to be a thousand of him. 
See Mr. Forbes — here he comes!” 

Denys was inclined to say that he would wait for 
Mr. Hodge or take his pictures elsewhere, but Mr. 
Forbes glanced at him and it was a kind, friendly 
glance, He decided to see Mr. Forbes. He had to 


8o 


THE EXPERT 


wait till Mr. Forbes was ready, in a very hot little 
room lit by a lantern overhead. The walls were 
hung with portraits of members of the famous firm 
— the first Mr. Hodge had a big wig and a snuff box 
and his portrait had been painted in kit-cat by Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, — and some of its most famous 
clients. The morning papers were on the table and 
a number of things very well worth the looking at 
were scattered about the room. 

He had not long to wait till he was summoned 
to the room where Mr. Forbes sat at the end of a 
long mahogany dining-table ; he looked up from his 
writing to smile as Denys came in. 

“You’ve something to show me,” he said. 

“Portraits, — from an old house in the West of 
Ireland.” 

“Ah! not so much picked over as other places. 
They’ve been too proud to sell as a rule. Let me 
have a look!” 

He helped Denys to undo the packing and drew 
the pictures to the light. As they came into view 
his expression changed. It had been kind but subtly 
discouraging. He did various odd things. He 
pursed his lips out and drew them in again with a 
sibilant sound. He whistled softly. He moved the 
pictures hither and thither to get the little light upon 
them. He walked to and fro, always with his face 
turned towards them. He had an «air of worshipping 
the pictures. 

Denys watched these performances anxiously but 
Mr. Forbes said nothing. After a while he went 
towards the bell and touched it. 

“If Mr. Hodge has come in, ask him if he will 
please come up here,” he said to the clerk. 

“Mr. Hodge has just come in, sir. I will tell 
him.” 

Mr. Hodge was in the room a few minutes later* 


THE EXPERT 


81 


a man with a country-squire look, weather-beaten 
and jovial. He brought a smell of the country with 
him and he wore violets on his lapel. 

“Good morning, Mr. Forbes,” he said. “A beau- 
tiful morning. You wished to see me?” 

He looked from Mr. Forbes to Denys with an 
enquiring eye. So this was one of the men who are 
institutions rather than men ; they represent so much 
that belongs to the life of England. He spoke with 
what Denys had heard called “an English accent.” 
Eton and Oxford were in the slow, musical intona- 
tions. 

The pictures were not in his view. 

“This gentleman,” said Mr. Forbes, “has brought 
some pictures to be valued? — or sold?” 

He turned an eye on Denys. 

“That remains with the owner,” said Denys. 

“I want your opinion, sir,” Mr. Forbes said with 
respect, and placed the portrait of the old lady 
where Mr. Hodge could see it. 

“Raeburn, by Jove,” said Mr. Hodge, “and a 
notably beautiful example.” 


CHAPTER IX 

THE OTHER SIDE 

T he portraits were left in charge of Messrs. 

Millar, Hardy and Hodge, safely locked in 
their strong room. Mr. Hodge had given an opin- 
ion as to their value. 

“The Godwin Raeburn, sold six years ago, fetched 
twenty-five thousand pounds. These are no whit be- 
hind that.” 

Denys breathed freely when the pictures were 
out of his keeping. The day was still young. Lord 
Leenane had a permanent address at his Club. 
There Denys was informed that his lordship was 
out of town. He was at Malvern Wells. 

He had just missed a train. There were two or 
three hours to be got through before the next. He 
got into a hansom and went off to Stratfield Place, 
where he found Mrs. Aarons in her little garden 
taking up the bulbs which had done flowering. She 
took off her gardening gloves to shake hands with 
him, and accompanied him into the house. She was 
unfeignedly glad to see him, although only a few 
days had passed since they had last met. He felt 
moved to apologize to her for his impulsive coming, 
and she said in her beautiful voice with its hint of 
foreign accent: “But that was so kind; it is that I 
thank you for, that you were sure you would be 
welcome.” 

“I have to see Lord Leenane at once,” he ex- 
plained, “and I find he is at Malvern. There is a 
train at three o’clock which will take me there with- 
out a long wait at Birmingham.” 

82 


THE OTHER SIDE 


8 3 


“I knew there was something to excite you,” she 
said placidly. “That will give you time for a lunch 
with me. I have sent Mr. Aarons away for a few 
days. He is not well. He overworks. If you will 
come and do my marketing with me — I shall not ask 
you to carry a basket — it will be most kind. It will 
not be amusing, I know. You may wish to> enter- 
tain yourself otherwise. You will have to lunch with 
me all alone. Will you mind?” 

“I shall love it,” said Denys, and meant what he 
said. 

“I might ring up Captain Arundel perhaps,” she 
suggested with a side-long glance at Denys. 

“Oh no, no,” he said hastily. “That would spoil 
everything.” 

“Ah, you do not like him,” she said sorrowfully. 
“My husband does not either. He must present a 
different side to me. I should like to show you . . . 
some letters he had written to me when he was away. 
There is nothing private, though much that is per- 
sonal. I want him to be liked.” 

She had led Denys into a slip of a room beyond 
the music room the existence of which he had not 
suspected. The door hid itself in a white and gold 
panel of the wall, in the shadowy corner by the 
organ. It was a little boudoir, sacred, Denys felt 
sure, to greater intimacies than obtained in the more 
public rooms. There was a signed portrait of the 
king on the mantelpiece and one or two of foreign 
royalties. The room was austerely furnished; the 
polished floor had one exquisite Persian rug laid 
upon it; there were a few delicate bits of Sheraton, — 
a spinet stood open, and the song open on the music- 
stand was “My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair.” 
There were many violets and lilies-of-the-valley in 
the room which was very delicately scented. The 
window was open behind the blinds, and the lace 
curtains stirred in the little breeze that came in. 


8 4 


THE OTHER SIDE 


“You will wait for me here,” she said, “while I 
make myself ready for the marketing. I shall not 
be very long. Meanwhile I wish you to read one 
or two of the letters I spoke of.” 

She opened a bureau under a tall slender book- 
case and, from a receptacle shut off by a little door, 
she took out a bundle of letters. Denys noticed with 
a certain surprise that the receptacle, standing 
among open pigeon-holes, was such as one might 
keep one’s most important or precious papers in. 

“You are to glance over them while I am away,” 
she said. “They are from Captain Arundel, — writ- 
ten during the South-African War. You knew he 
was out there? He was only twenty-two when he 
went out; now he is thirty. I know he does not look 
it. He is so very fair.” 

Denys thought that before twenty-two, Hilary 
Arundel had managed to get into the moneylender’s 
hands, and as though she detected the thought Mrs. 
Aarons said : 

“He was very young. A rich relative had sent 
him to Eton and accustomed him to all sorts of 
extravagances ; then died without leaving him enough 
to live on in the way he was accustomed to live. 
He got into debt and came to my husband, who gave 
him a good wigging and turned him over to me. 
Then the War came and he went out and acquitted 
himself splendidly. He will have to marry an heir- 
ess though, for he has nothing. 

She smiled a queer, wistful smile, looking back at 
him over her shoulder as she went towards the door. 

She stayed away long enough to make Denys sus- 
pect that she gave him time to read the letters. He 
did it with some distaste, feeling he had no right 
to read them. But, after all, Mrs. Aarons had as- 
sured him there was nothing private. As he went 
on, his interest grew, half-unwillingly. The letters 


THE OTHER SIDE 


85 


were vividly, even brilliantly, written. After all, he 
might have known, he said to himself, that the af- 
fection of such a woman as Rachel Aarons could not 
have been taken by the cold fop he had thought 
Arundel to be. 

But the thing that surprised him most, was the 
attitude of the writer’s mind towards Rachel Aarons 
and his expression of it. Denys would have said 
off-hand that Hilary Arundel would care nothing for 
a woman no longer young. On the contrary the 
letters breathed a worshipping respect. Such letters 
might have been written to a queen by a devoted 
subject. 

Were there two men in Hilary Arundel, he asked 
himself, and wondered which side he had shown to 
Dawn Finucane. 

Mrs. Aarons came into the room, equipped in a 
beautifully-cut grey coat and skirt for a practical 
morning. She smiled at him as she took up the 
bundle of letters he had laid down on the table. 

“Well?” she asked, and again her expression 
was very wistful. 

“They are quite unlike what I should have ex- 
pected. They are very clever. More than that they 
have heart.” 

“Ah, I am glad you found that out. I hoped you 
would. You will meet his sister at lunch. She will 
teach you a little more about him.” 

Denys had not known that a morning’s shopping 
could be so pleasant. Perhaps because he was so 
little used to the society of women, it was very 
pleasant to him to be associated in so intimate a way 
with such a charming and gracious woman as Rachel 
Aarons. 

She shopped at Harrod’s and did her shopping in 
the most thorough way. To see her selecting the 
things she wished to buy, was a lesson in careful 


86 


THE OTHER SIDE 


housekeeping. Once or twice she turned and smiled 
at Denys, as though conjecturing his amusement. 
Once, when she had rejected the shopman’s choice 
of mushrooms and carefully picked out what she 
required, she said to him: 

“I shop like a Frenchwoman. I had a French 
mother — a Bretonne. My father was Spanish and 
despised money. The Spaniard and the Bretonne 
are forever at war in me. I conciliate the Bretonne 
by being very careful when I make purchases. While 
her eyes are upon that I give with the Spanish 
hand.” 

Her laugh was as fresh as a girl’s. 

Going up and down the departments and in the 
lifts they met many people with whom Mrs. Aarons 
exchanged greetings. Some of them looked curi- 
ously at Denys, who was laden with Mrs. Aarons’s 
smaller purchases and enjoying it immensely. He 
had an amused feeling that they must think he had 
been going the pace as apparently most of Mrs. 
Aarons’s proteges had been. 

Once, as they crossed a department sacred to mys- 
terious things in lace and muslin, at which Denys 
glanced and averted his eyes, they came upon a 
pretty thing. It was a little girl about four years 
old. She was dressed enchantingly in a white satin 
frock with mittens and an immense bonnet, the front 
of it filled in with roses. On the little white satin 
feet were two pink roses and one hand carried a muff 
of white velvet with a pink rose laid upon it. 

The young ladies of the department were gathered 
around, frankly adoring. A plain-looking but 
pleasant nurse was explaining that the little girl was 
on her way to be photographed. As they caught 
sight of the pretty thing a woman passing by stooped 
and kissed the little cheek. The child, who was 
probably having more of an ovation than she alto- 


THE OTHER SIDE 


87 

gether liked, looked up at her nurse with a bewil- 
dered air and her delicious outward turning lip 
trembled like the full lip of a snap-dragon. 

Rachel Aarons stood still and extended her arms, 
and the child, after one glance, ran into them and 
hid her face against the motherly breast. Denys 
stood by a little shyly, thinking how charming it 
was, nevertheless, embarrassed as though by a scene. 

“Ah! she is tired!” Mrs. Aarons said to the 
nurse, and her voice was softer than roseleaves. 

“She is, ma’am,” said the nurse. “She’s little to 
be made such a fuss of. But I’m done my business 
here now, and I’ll be getting on. 

“She is going to be photographed?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Where?” 

The nurse mentioned the name of a famous artist 
in photography whose studio was in Kensington 
Square. 

“I shall drive you there; it is on my way home.” 

The nurse thanked her in a bewildered way, and 
they went down in the lift and out of the shop to 
where the carriage waited. All the time Mrs. 
Aarons carried the child, who had flung out little 
fat arms upwards to embrace the lady’s neck. The 
nurse protested vainly that Nancy could walk very 
well, but Nancy did not seem inclined to walk nor 
Mrs. Aarons to put her down. 

Nor did they lose Nancy when the studio was 
reached. Having ascertained from the nurse that 
Nancy’s parents lived in St. John’s Wood and that 
they intended to go home by various buses, Mrs. 
Aarons discovered that she had a good slice of the 
morning still on her hands and decided to stay and 
see the photograph taken and afterwards to drive 
the child, who had had quite enough of the crowded 
morning, home. She gave Denys his choice of re- 


88 


THE OTHER SIDE 


turning in the carriage to Stratfield Place with vari- 
ous purchases which were required for lunch, and 
sending the carriage back, or waiting where he was. 

He decided to wait where he was, and enjoyed 
very much indeed seeing Nancy photographed in a 
little garden-room, where she fell into the most 
delicious poses anticipating every wish of the pho- 
tographer. Nancy, getting over her first alarm and 
fatigue was merry, and Rachel Aarons was merry 
with her. That was something Denys could not have 
suspected, the essential child in this gracious woman. 
The fairy .peals of the child’s laughter were an- 
swered by the deeper, richer laughter of the woman. 

After the photographing was over they drove the 
child and nurse to the house in St. John’s Wood, 
which was retired in a garden. 

“Please tell the baby’s Mamma that I am coming 
one day to see Nancy,” Mrs. Aarons said, when 
they had deposited the two at the little green gate. 
“Say that Madame Alba, — she will know the name 
perhaps, — has fallen in love with Nancy.” 

“Nancy is going to have a doll as big as herself,” 
she said to Denys as they turned the corner of the 
road and were out of sight of the vigorously-waving 
Nancy. 

Already the light was dying out of her face and 
from her eyes, and something of a wistful sadness 
had taken its place. But she was very merry when 
at lunch she repeated the story of Nancy to Mary 
Arundel, laughing at the little girl’s sallies and jests. 

Denys liked Mary Arundel, who had little like- 
ness to her brother beyond her extreme fairness. 
She was a somewhat heavily built girl, of greater 
amplitude than belonged to her age. Her fair hair 
escaped untidily from her close-fitting hat and made 
an aureole round her face. Her clothes were shape- 
less; and yet she had both charm and distinction. 


THE OTHER SIDE 


89 

As she talked she panted a little, and she seemed 
unable to pronounce the letter “r,” so that she talked 
of “Hilawy” and Mrs. “Aawons.” She had small 
even teeth like a child, and fine grey eyes under the 
tumbling confusion of her hair. Altogether, Denys 
found her very pleasant. 

It was obvious that she adored her brother and, 
incidentally, that he was a devoted brother. 

“Hilawy wants me to go to Huwlingham with 
him to-morrow,” she said. “I told him I would go 
if those wr-retches,” — she made a violent effort and 
brought out the “r” with a roll like the French “r” — 
“the Kinnesky girls, were not of the party. I’ve told 
Hilawy I simply cannot endure them, and he laughed 
and said neither could he, for the matter of that. 
He will flirt, silly boy!” 

Denys remembered the bold-looking, handsome 
girls at the Opera. 

“They flirt so,” Mary Arundel went on. “I can- 
not endure their flirtations with Hilawy, who, poor 
boy, has to mawwy money, and so have they, of 
course, the wr-retches! I don’t know where Lady 
Hebe gets it fwom, but they go everywhere and get 
their dwesses from Paquin.” 

Again, she was very candid about her brother’s 
temper. Something had gone wrong on an occasion, 
and Miss Arundel said, describing it: 

“You know I weally think the busby affected poor 
Hilawy’s temper more than anything. Such a bore 
having to wear it. He was simply fwightful, Mrs. 
Aawons. I was quite fwightened of him. Only, you 
know, when he is weally most dweadfully alarming 
he begins to laugh at himself and then he is simply 
adowable, and you forgive him evewything.” 

“You should see that brother and sister to- 
gether,” said Mrs. Aarons as she drove Denys to 
Paddington; “you would know how much of good 


9 ° 


THE OTHER SIDE 


there is in Captain Arundel. He would leave the 
most beautiful and most important woman in Lon- 
don for his sister. It is pretty to see them dancing 
together. Hilary criticizes all the women’s frocks, 
never discovering that Mary dresses like a rag-bag.” 

There was certainly something of good in Hilary 
Arundel. Denys could not doubt it after reading 
those letters, and he had been greatly taken with 
Miss Arundel’s simple and unaffected ways and her 
sense of humor where her adored brother was con- 
cerned. 

Oddly enough, he was not sure that he was quite 
pleased at Hilary Arundel’s rehabilitation. He had 
made up his mind to detest him. He did not want 
to be robbed of his antipathy. 


CHAPTER X 

DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 

A | A HE westering sun was on the Malvern Hills as 
Denys approached them, jogging in a fly for 
a few miles through an enchanting country of May- 
bloom and fresh greenness, singing waters, the bleat- 
ing of sheep and lambs, the calling of the plover. 
The hills stood up green and wooded to their heights 
as he had not known them in Ireland, where the 
mountains recede as one approaches them and one 
is caught into their mystery before one is aware. 

Here the hills were kind, comfortable, approach- 
able. Far off they had the mist of distances, but 
as one came nearer all that fell away and one saw 
the sides of the hills dotted with houses set in gar- 
dens “enamel’ed,” as the old poet puts it, with many 
brilliant flowers. The house overlooking thirty 
miles of exquisite country that stretched to where 
Severn glided to the sea, which the driver of the 
fly indicated as “Mimosa,” the house Denys was in 
search of, sat in a garden so tightly packed with 
flowers that it was a blob of color on the green hill- 
side. 

He got out at the foot of an immensely steep hill 
and walked up through a dark tunnel of trees before 
he emerged on the open road for “Mimosa.” There 
it was, — a tall, rather toppling white house, with 
the garden below and beside it, a wonderful view of 
the Vale and Breden Hill in the distance. The 
nightingales were singing although it was still broad 
daylight as he walked under the pale green trees, and 
below there was a chorus of running waters mingled 
with the sounds of flocks and herds and the calling 
91 


92 DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 

of the birds. It was an enchanting country. All 
the scents of May were in his nostrils as he stood at 
the hall door of “Mimosa” waiting to be admitted. 
The platform on which he stood before the hall 
spanned an abyss some thirty feet deep, so swiftly 
did the hill at this point run down to the plain. He 
had noticed that on the side next the road the 
house showed only two modest stories, while at the 
back the lowest of four stories was on a level with 
the highest garden beds. 

The door was opened by a respectable, grey- 
haired man, obviously a butler. Is there any occu- 
pation that so stamps itself upon him who practises 
it? He received Denys with a fine blend of respect 
and haughtiness and showed him into a long, very 
pleasant room, with a low window at the further 
end overlooking the beautiful stretch of country. 

The room had only one occupant, Lord Leenane, 
who was sitting in a rather dejected attitude, doing 
nothing apparently but looking straight before him, 
when Denys entered. 

He sprang to his feet and the boredom fell from 
his face like magic, leaving behind it a cheerful ex- 
citement. 

“Hello !” he said. “This is decent of you, Denys. 
I was just wishing I might see someone from home.” 
He had been about four days away from Ireland but 
he talked as though the days had been years. “You 
never saw such a place. It’s worse than Tunbridge 
Wells, for that, at least, has a good train service to 
London.” 

“It is a beautiful place,” said Denys, catching a 
glimpse of the “enamel’d” plain and the distant 
prospect of hills outside the window. It was a very 
pretty window, — early Georgian, — with the many 
panes round instead of flat as in their modern imi- 
tations. 


DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 93 

“Now don’t get talking like that,” said Lord Lee- 
nane peevishly. “That is like my sister and Dawn. 
Sophie’s happy as long as she’s got a church at hand. 
She’s always saying her prayers. Dawn is out climb- 
ing the hills with old Monk to take care of her: 
you remember Monk the bull-terrier. Lumbering 
brutes, only good for guards I think them, though 
I am fond of Monk ! Give me a good shooting dog. 
You remember Fly, the little spaniel I had at Clo- 
gher, she died since I saw you — picked up poison. 
Egad, when I came home and found instead of Fly 
a little mound in the grass, I was as sick a man as 
ever you saw.” 

Denys remembered the dogs. There had been a 
good many of them at Clogher. He remembered 
Monk on the hearthrug, his silky side heaving in 
sleep, and little Fly doing her pretty tricks and be- 
ing rewarded by a dole of biscuits. 

“Ah, I’m sorry about Fly,” he said. “I hadn’t 
heard.” 

“No; people don’t bother to talk about a dead 
dog. It often means more to a dog’s owner than 
the death of a human being. If Fly was here now 
she’d be making me die laughing, going through her 
tricks. Well, — it’s just as well, perhaps.” He 
heaved a tremendous sigh. “I wouldn’t have much 
work for Fly in a place like this. She might have 
turned poacher, by Jove.” 

Denys said again that he was very sorry for Fly, 
and felt it. 

“You came in the nick of time,” said Lord Lee- 
nane. “I was feeling suicidal. Now it occurs to 
me to ask what the deuce brings you here? You 
can’t have come on the business of the agency. That 
may be trusted to take care of itself. By the way, 
why did you bolt while we were at Clogher. I called 
over to see you, but on the way I dropped in at 


94 DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 

Drum Station to pick up a parcel and Mick Reddy, 
the porter, told me you’d gone to England. You 
went gadding very soon after I’d made you my 
agent. How did you come to track me down here ? 
Never mind the phrase: I’m deucedly glad to see 
you. All parsons and old women here; just as bad 
as Tunbridge Wells. See what I’ve come to. Egad, 
only for Dawn’s sake I’d as soon be dead.” 

“I returned home just in time to miss you. We 
must have passed each other by, between Euston 
and Holyhead.” 

“And you’ve come back again. You are a rolling- 
stone man. If I could stay in Ireland I’d stay in it. 
Best country in the world for a poor man, in fact 
the only country.” 

“I wanted to see you, and luckily you had left 
your address at your Club.” 

“You wanted to see me?” A dark cloud of sus- 
picion came down on Leenane’s blue eyes and the 
cheerful candor of his face. 

“If you want to squeeze the people, to put up the 
rents on them when the leases fall in, I’m dashed if 
I’ll consent. The Finucanes were never rack-renters. 
I say ‘No!’ — and I stand on it. I suppose old 
O’Connell Jones is still at it with his tenantry boy- 
cotting and emergency men and all the rest of it. I’d 
let ’em shoot me if they wanted to, rather than ask 
protection like O’Connell Jones.” 

“I haven’t heard there were any new develop- 
ments there,” said Denys; “the last I heard was, 
that the emergency men had flung up the job and the 
old man was doing the work himself, with the as- 
sistance of his old housekeeper and a half-witted 
boy.” 

“Dashed old fool!” said Lord Leenane, and then 
his tone changed. 

“Now there’s a tragedy if you like! Old O’Con- 


DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 95 

nell Jones’s squabbles with his tenantry have gone on 
for thirty years. They killed his wife and drove 
his only daughter into a convent. His son never 
comes back. He’s got the run of a kitchen in York- 
shire — I believe she’s a lovely girl, and Walter de- 
serves her and the money as well — a fine straight 
handsome fellow. He was brought up with the 
people and he hates the whole business, and there’s 
poor old O’Connell Jones thinking he’s keeping the 
place for Walter, and fighting with the people like 
the devil because he won’t abate a jot of Walter’s 
rights. Walter will never come back. He told me 
so. He’s a popular man in Yorkshire and manages 
his wife’s estate. He loves to be at peace with his 
fellow men, — that’s his sort. Not likely he’d come 
back to an old rat-trap of a house and a poor im- 
poverished estate that his father and the tenants 
between them have been playing the devil with for 
twenty years.” 

“I didn’t think of putting up the rents,” said 
Denys. “Most of the land in the West of Ireland 
ought to carry no rent. People ought to be paid for 
living on it.” 

“Nice sentiments for my new agent,” said Lord 
Leenane with a grin. “Well, if you didn’t come for 
that, what did you come for? Not for love of my 
beautiful eyes, hey?” 

At this moment the servant who had opened the 
door brought in a tea-tray, very well plenished. 

“Tell Mrs. Simmons that Mr. Fitzmaurice will 
stay with us for a few days. She’s to get a room 
ready for him. Plenty of room in this great big 
house, Fitzmaurice. Don’t talk of hotels. Tell Mrs. 
Simmons to give him a room on the country side 
of the house. The other side is deucedly depressing 
with the hill blocking up your window so you can’t 
breathe. Very different, these little foothills, from 


9 6 DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 


our mountains — hey? What price the Reek and 
Nephin? I haven’t had a breath of air since I came 
here.” 

The servant went out of the room with a flat- 
footed softness, closing the door behind him. 

“Now there’s a fellow who has lived ten years at 
Clogher and never lost his Cockney speech,” Lee- 
nane said, after the closing of the door. “Mrs. Sim- 
mons is a colleen, though she’s forty years old; wavy 
dark hair and blue eyes with a brogue it would do 
your heart good to hear, and a complexion of milk 
and roses. They have a very comfortable boarding 
house here. Everybody in Malvern lives by taking 
everybody else as lodgers. No one here just now 
but ourselves. I hope Bridget Simmons is not re- 
fusing lodgers on our account. She cooks like an 
artist or a Frenchwoman, so her house is always full. 
I don’t see myself with other lodgers, or at least 
the kind who come to Malvern.” 

Denys seemed a long time in getting to the point. 
He had indeed so much and such startling things to 
tell that he hardly knew where to begin. A strange 
diffidence had come upon him. 

He poured himself out a cup of tea and ate some 
hot tea-cakes while Lord Leenane watched him with 
an air of amused disgust. 

“You wouldn’t like a whiskey-and-soda better?” 
he asked. “There it is on the table by your elbow. 
No? Young fellows are changed since my day. I’ll 
tell you what, Denys. If the Irish ever give up drink- 
ing whiskey they’ll become Englishmen, and that, in 
my opinion would be the worst calamity that could 
befall them. Those things you are going to eat are 
called crumpets. Only parsons can digest them. 
I’ve seen a parson eat fifteen since I’ve been in this 
place and wash ’em down with a gallon of tea. Sim- 
mons doesn’t bring me such muck; he knows better.” 


DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 97 

Denys plunged in medias res , dismissing the sub- 
ject of the tea and crumpets. 

“The day after you were good enough to give 
me your confidence, Lord Leenane,” he said, “I 
went over to London and saw Mr. Simon Aarons.” 

“The deuce you did!” exclaimed Leenane, staring. 
“What the devil made you do that and what did 
you expect to get by it?” 

“I got what I expected.” said Denys, sturdily. 
“He knocked off the interest and accepted a thous- 
and pounds in payment of the debt.” 

“I suppose it’s a mere trifle to you, young man, 
that I haven’t got a thousand pounds ! If the auction 
brings four hundred pounds I’ll be lucky!” 

There was a certain ominous quietness in his 
voice, as though he was keeping his temper with dif- 
ficulty. 

“You’d better have let sleeping dogs lie,” he went 
on. “I’ll tell you something more that may be useful 
to you, you’ve got too much zeal. I remember old 
Hyacinth Casey, the Crown Prosecutor. They said 
he had a hand in all the Government appointments 
in Ireland. He was a very good-looking fellow 
and a great man with the ladies. When a new 
official came to thank him for using a bit of back- 
stairs influence on his behalf, Hyacinth used to pat 
him on the shoulder and say, “No zeal, my boy! 
Remember — no zeal ! There are more men walking 
Grafton Street barefoot this day from too much 
zeal than ever laziness brought to their care!” 

“I paid the money,” said Denys, doggedly. 

“Where did you get it from may I ask?” 

“From my father. I owed you more than that, 
Lord Leenane.” 

“You owed me nothing at all. Just a little trans- 
action between gentlemen. You paid me by being 
£ credit to your schooling, So you’ve picked your 


98 DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 

father’s pockets for me! How did you get round 
old Simon? Through Mrs. Simon, hey? I never 
met her. I found Simon himself as hard as nails. I 
didn’t want any favors from him. What did you 
do it for?” 

He suddenly flashed at Denys. 

“No nonsense about my daughter,” he said. “I 
won’t have Dawn live in poverty. The man that 
asks for her must bring fifty thousand pounds in his 
hand at least. I’ve had enough of dragging the devil 
by the tail.” 

Denys turned a deep painful red. Mentally he had 
a picture of himself in his rough, farming clothes, 
sitting on the sunny side of the ditch the first day he 
had laid eyes on Dawn Finucane. He had looked 
down at his hands that day, to find his nails broken 
and dirty and he had thrust them into the pockets 
of his old coat hastily, but he had never been sure 
that she had not seen them. Her young imperious 
eyes had looked at him as though she would say: 
“Boy, why are you so dirty and unkempt!” So the 
vision of her that day remained with him over the 
years. 

He stammered that he should not think of lifting 
his eyes so high. 

“Tut!” said Lord Leenane. “It’s plain to me 
that you’re not in Society, Denys.” The use of his 
Christian name had a reassuring comfortable sound 
to Denys’s ear. “There’s hardly a beauty so highly 
placed and so fastidious that a dirty fellow with 
money may not aspire to possess her. Mind, I’m 
not saying the girl would have him nor that her 
parents wouldn’t tell him to get out. But as a rule 
a fellow with money can go anywhere, no matter 
how dirty he is. You’re clean, Denys, and you’re a 
gentleman. The schooling hadn’t much to give you. 


DENYS RENDERS AN ACCOUNT 99 

The gentleman was there. Fitzmaurice of Mur- 
rough need touch the hat to no man.” 

“Thank you, Lord Leenane,” said Denys, and felt 
that he loved the blue-eyed, bluff-spoken, honest 
gentleman.” 

“How the devil am I going to pay you off?” Lee- 
nane said, looking at Denys with a considering eye. 
“I can’t leave your father’s pockets empty. I’m 
obliged to you, Denys, but it might be as well to have 
left it. Aaron would have renewed — it’s his busi- 
ness. Of course he’d have bled me white — but, 
after all, there’s not much he could take. Well, 
well, it was kindly done, Denys, my boy, and I’m 
grateful to you and your father.” 

Denys stumbled over what he had to say further. 
It was ridiculous. If he could have imagined him- 
self announcing to Lord Leenane that he was the 
owner of two pictures valued at fifty thousand 
pounds he could only have seen himself as a joyous 
messenger of good tidings. Now he found a queer 
difficulty in telling the story. 


CHAPTER XI 

THE “PRINCESS” 

HAT did the sticks sell for?” asked Lord Lee- 

** nane. “Was Patsy Hynes in good form, 
and did the whole countryside turn out? Did my 
friends stand by me and prevent the things going 
for nothing?” 

“I bought in some things,” said Denys — “things 
you must have forgotten. There was your mother’s 
harp — George Armstrong often saw her playing it, 
— and some drawings by Lady Leenane.” 

“Thank you, Denys, I wonder how I came to for- 
get them. I did it in such a deuce of a hurry. I’ve 
always been too impetuous, Denys. ‘More hurry 
worse speed,’ says the proverb. You were a picture 
of slowness the first day I saw you, yet you drained 
the bog, a thing no man ever thought possible.” 

“It’s very rich land,” said Denys. “The half of 
the bog is not bog at all, but just land turned to 
swamp by the Murrough overflowing its banks. I’m 
going to reclaim on a bigger scale with your per- 
mission.” 

“Where’s the money to come from?” 

“Mr. Aarons will advance it at three and one half 
per cent.” 

“You’ve got the four-leafed shamrock, Denys 
Fitzmaurice. It’s a white man’s rate of interest not 
a Jew’s.” 

“Mr. Aarons is a white man.” 

“So you seem to have found him; and he’ll let you 
have the money, — to play ducks and drakes with? 
But no, you won’t do that.” 

100 


THE “ PRINCESS ” 


IOI 


“I hope not, Lord Leenane. By the way I’ve 
something else to tell you.” 

He realized a new cause for embarrassment. Mr. 
Hodges had mentioned the sum of fifty thousand 
pounds as the probable value of the Raeburns, and 
Lord Leenane had said that his daughter’s suitor 
must possess at least fifty thousand pounds. It was 
a coincidence, but Denys felt ridiculously shy of 
mentioning the amount 

“Out with it! You’re too slow for me, Denys. 
The auction was a bad one. I’m prepared for that. 
I’ve lost my chairs and tables and I haven’t a bed 
to sleep on and the things have gone for nothing.” 

“Mr. Hynes thought the auction had made at 
least a thousand pounds. His accounts were not all 
in.” 

“That’s good. Why didn’t you tell me that at 
first. A thousand pounds. Why I’m rich ! I’ll pay 
off half my debt to your father and take Dawn over 
to Paris for a few weeks. You’ve no idea of what 
life here is like. D’ye see what’s under the windows, 
Denys, my boy? A graveyard. Cats and dogs and 
an old horse or two and a marmozet. Look at 
their head stones ! The old people who lived here 
before Simmons bought it up, kept a houseful of 
animals. The old man left it in his will that he was 
to be buried among them and the old lady followed 
suit. It was their own land and nobody could object. 
If you’ll look round the corner you’ll see an elegant 
tomb with a draped urn atop of it. It gives me 
the blues. Simmons says the summer boarders like 
it. They like serious things else they’d never come 
to Malvern. The books in this house would turn 
you sick. Sermons every one of them.” 

“Did you ever know that you happened to possess 
a pair of very valuable pictures?” Denys asked when 
Lord Leenane paused for breath. 


102 


THE “PRINCESS” 


“I can’t say that I did. What kind of pictures 
were they?” 

Denys described the Raeburn ladies as well as he 
could, and Lord Leenane had a hazy memory of 
having seen them one day when he and his brother 
Hugh, long since dead, had gone seeking hidden 
treasure in a lumber room. Someone at some time 
must have left them there and forgotten their ex- 
istence. 

“They must have gone in my grandmother’s time,” 
he said; “she lived to 99 and she had the habits of 
a magpie.” 

Denys went on to tell of the struggle between him- 
self and Mr. Levi from Westport for the possession 
of the pictures. 

“I was bidding in the dark,” he said, “for I really 
know nothing about pictures, but the blood was in 
my head and I’d have gone on bidding, and so would 
the Jew only for his being rammed in the stomach 
by Patsy Mulcahy and knocked breathless.” 

“That boy deserves to be encouraged. I hope 
you treated him decently.” 

“It would have been aiding and abetting an as- 
sault,” said Denys dryly. 

“Now I’d have flung him a crown before I thought 
of that.” 

“I did fling him half a crown for his ready tongue, 
not for his nefarious conduct.” 

“That is your way of putting it. How much did 
you pay?” 

“Twenty-five pounds apiece.” 

Leenane’s lips shaped themselves as though they 
whistled. 

“A big price,” he said. “It doesn’t sound a bar- 
gain to me. What do you look to make out of 
them?” 

Denys drew a long breath before speaking. 


THE “PRINCESS” 


103 

“Mr. Hodge of Millar, Hardy and Hodge says 
they are by Sir Henry Raeburn and of his best 
period. He said they might fetch fifty thousand 
pounds, even more if you were willing to let them 
go to America.” 

“Fifty thousand pounds !” Lord Leenane’s voice 
was almost a shriek. “Fifty thousand pounds lying 
in a lumber-room for no one knows how long, at 
the mercy of the damp and the rats and every con- 
founded chance ! Why Hugh and I were as likely 
as not to cut them in strips with our new penknives 
that day long ago. I remember as though it were 
yesterday. We’d been presented with knives that 
were a whole tool chest in themselves. I remember 
getting whacked for cutting my initials on the oak 
panelling of the hall. Good Lord, what an escape ! 
Are you sure, Denys?” 

“Mr. Hodge seemed very sure,” said Denys 
modestly. 

“And the Jew might have had them only for 
Patsy Mulcahy. I’ll give the boy a good start in 
life. He must be a fine promising lad.” 

Suddenly he whirled round on Denys. 

“Funny, my talking about fifty thousand pounds,” 
he said with slight embarrassment. I congratulate 
you, Denys. I’d rather you had it than most men.” 

“It’s not mine,” said Denys stiffly, and with a sud- 
den bright flush, “It’s yours, Lord Leenane, or it 
will be yours. What use have I for pictures! I 
bought them in for you, as your agent, as I bought 
the other things which I felt you had overlooked. 
They stand in your name in Mr. Hynes’s book as 
they are deposited in your name with Messrs. 
Millar, Hardy and Hodge. You will intimate to 
them if you wish the pictures to be sold.” 

“God bless my soul!” said Lord Leenane piously. 
“Here is a man with no use for fifty thousand 


104 


THE “PRINCESS” 


pounds. Chucking it out of the window, by Jove. 
Will anyone tell me if I’m standing on my head or 
my heels. You’re a madman, Denys, my son.” 

Denys blushed high with pleasure at being called 
Lord Leenane’s son. He was tasting the delicious 
pleasure of rendering a great service where it was 
owed and where he loved to render it. As for hav- 
ing no use for fifty thousand pounds, well, it dazzled 
him to think of the use he might make of it. Not 
that he looked as high as Dawn Finucane. She was 
a star in his sky and he worshipped her. He had 
not yet come to the point of considering that she 
could stoop to him. One so incomparable as she 
must have many adorers, many aspirants. When 
he thought of the adorers, in a world he did not 
enter, he felt the sword of jealousy turn in his heart. 

“I’ll make it up to you, Denys,” said Lord Lee- 
nane eagerly. “I’ll pay you a decent salary. Who 
knows but that together we’ll pull the place out of 
the mire yet? It’s fine of you, Denys. Plenty of 
men would have no scruple about keeping the pic- 
tures for themselves.” 

“I was your agent,” said Denys. “I owe you 
more than I am ever likely to repay.” 

“You’ve given me a little bit on account, if Mr. 
Hodge is right, and he’s bound to be right,” Leenane 
said dryly. 

Then his expression altered. 

“You know what this means to me,” he said, and 
wrung Denys’s hand. “It means no more pigging it 
like ‘this’.” He waved his hand round the com- 
fortable room with the beautiful view. “It means 
that my hobnobbing with tabbies for the rest of my 
days is done. It means home for me and Dawn. 
I’ll take no risks. I’ll put the money in gilt-edged 
securities. I’ll lock it up from myself so that I 
won’t be chucking it away on mad schemes. It will 


THE “PRINCESS” ioj 

keep me and Dawn in comfort and I’ll have a bit to 
leave my girl when I die.” 

There was the sound of the closing hall door and 
Dawn came into the room bringing health and en- 
ergy with her, Monk shuffling behind her. She had 
an enquiring young air. Her neck rising from her 
bare throat carried her golden head like a queen. 
A bit of a song came to Denys’s mind. 

My Love is like a poplar tree 
But not so aisy shaken, O! 

She had a proud, virginal air, and she was as un- 
conscious as a boy. 

“Oh, Mr. Fitzmaurice,” she said, “I did not know 
you had come.” 

She advanced with an outstretched hand. 

“Take a good look at him, Dawn,” said her 
father. “He’s just chucked away fifty thousand 
pounds. To be strictly accurate he’s put it into my 
pocket. It’s the key of Clogher for you, Dawn, my 
girl. You’d never be happy with Clogher under 
the weather, empty and sighing for you, and the 
rats and the owls and bats to keep it company.” 

Dawn wide-eyed and beautiful and young stared 
from one face to the other. 

“It only means — it is your father’s way of saying 
that I happened to buy in as his agent, at the auction, 
a couple of pictures among other things, that have 
proved to be of great value. It was a mere acci- 
dent, my knowing a very little about them, enough 
to know that in all probability they were of worth.” 

“Mr. Levi from Westport knew all about them,” 
broke in Lord Leenane; “only for Denys and the 
mercy of Heaven and a butting small boy called 
Patsy Mulcahy, whom I shall take under my wing, 
the pictures would have fallen to Mr. Levi and I fear 
they would be his in law. You see what we owe to 
Denys.” 


10 6 THE “ PRINCESS ” 

The flooding light of Dawn Finucane’s gaze made 
Denys wish that he might go through fire and water 
for her sake. 

“But . . but,” she said, “if Mr. Fitzmaurice 
bought them they are his, are they not? And not 
ours?” 

“So I’ve said to Denys. He won’t hear of it. 
He says he did not buy for himself, — he bought in 
for me such things as my carelessness had left to be 
sold. When it came to selling I thought I should 
never get out of the place. I hated the necessity for 
it. Think of your mother’s harp being left to be 
sold, and her pictures ! Some of the furniture too, 
Denys bought in. There is an old French bed of 
considerable value. It would have gone to a farm- 
house or to one of the Drum shopkeepers, if it had 
not been for Denys.” 

Dawn still wore her air of wonder. 

“But,” she said, “you talk of the key of Clogher. 
That would mean a deal of money. We should have 
to put the place in repair. No pictures could do 
that for us.” 

“Wait, miss, till you hear.” Lord Leenane 
rubbed his hands together, gleefully. “We shall 
spend ten thousand pounds on putting the house 
right, ten thousand pounds. After that we shall 
have forty thousand pounds left to keep the wolf 
from the door. Unless Denys is deceiving me, or 
Mr. Hodge of Millar, Hardy and Hodge is deceiv- 
ing Denys, the pictures will fetch fifty thousand 
pounds, perhaps more. Fifty thousand pounds!” 

With the repetition something came to his mind. 

“By Jove!” he said and winked solemnly at 
Denys. “We are dealing in thousands these days. 

I wanted fifty thousand pounds to set you beyond the 
reach of poverty a little while ago, Dawn. I’ll raise 
it. I want a hundred thousand. I’m a rich man 


THE “PRINCESS” 


107 


now, for one of my simple habits. We’ll settle down 
at Clogher, Dawn. We’ll buy back what we can of 
the sticks. I don’t regret selling them. Why, if I 
hadn’t, the rats might have gnawed the Raeburn 
ladies and the rains washed them out. I can’t realize 
it yet. It was a lucky day for you and me, Dawn, 
when we found Denys sitting on the sunny side of 
the bank waiting till the fairies sent him something 
to do.” 

“How can we thank you?” Dawn said in the voice 
for which Denys had found and discarded many 
comparisons, — a beautiful ringing young voice full 
of music. 

Again Denys had the sense of being bathed in the 
effulgence of Dawn’s smile. 

“Denys is lucky, Dawn; he’s lucky,” Leenane 
went on in his mood of exhilaration. “He’s going to 
make our fortunes beyond what he has already made 
for us. He’s like the boy in the fairy-tale : the boy 
in the fairy-tale always sat on the sunny side of the 
bank, playing on his flute or a tin whistle, before he 
went out to seek his fortune, and came back a prince. 
Denys was a prince before ever he went. Not like 
Terence McGrath,” — he named a brilliantly success- 
ful public man — “Terence was one of seven sons, 
and the father had four acres and three cows and 
a few sheep and pigs to make gentlemen out of them, 
for he had an ambition that way. He always said 
he didn’t believe in softening his boys. So as each 
one arrived at the age of fourteen, having finished 
his education at the National School, Tim McGrath 
called that boy to him and presented him with a 
map of the world for a sign of what he was to con- 
quer, a loaf of bread for a provision till the con- 
quest began, and a kick to send him on his way and 
harden him before the world began it. They’ve all 
done well, especially Terence, but you’d never call 


108 THE “PRINCESS” 

Terence a prince. Not like Denys. Denys looks 
the prince, eh Dawn?” 

Denys laughed and blushed. He thought to him- 
self confusedly that if he was the Prince, who was 
the Princess ? There could be none other than Dawn 
Finucane. She was a Princess, a Fairy Princess from 
the top of her golden head to her little feet. 

“By the way,” said Lord Leenane. “That was 
funny about the fifty thousand. Supposing you had 
held on to it, Denys, as you might have done, — 
you’d have kept me to my word maybe. Maybe 


CHAPTER XII 

A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 

T ord Leenane would have it that they should 
all return to Ireland together. What matter 
that the pictures were not sold nor a date fixed for 
their sale! What matter if he had, as he expressed 
it, sold the beds under them at Clogher. He could 
replace the beds with something comfortable and 
sanitary. After that they could live without furni- 
ture, beyond what Denys had bought in, till they 
could begin to restore the house. It was a very 
good thing to have a house empty before beginning 
to restore it. The auction was a providential thing 
in every way. They had got rid of a deal of old 
rubbish and had found fifty thousand pounds. 

Denys made a mental note as to where certain 
things sold at the auction were to be found; things 
he had associated in his own mind with Dawn Finu- 
cane’s childhood and girlhood. 

There had been a room the contents of which he 
had longed to buy but had been shy of Patsy Hynes’s 
rolling black eyes if he had ventured to ask him to 
buy them in. It had been obviously a girl’s room, 
with a little white bed draped in curtains of faded 
blue silk, the furniture very old — a delightful oval 
Sheraton glass, in which he had imagined Dawn’s 
face as it grew lovelier with the passing of the days 
and years, a little bookcase, a beautiful old ward- 
robe, a blue carpet sprinkled with roses, a com- 
fortable chair or two and a sofa covered in old 
chintz. He remembered with gratitude that Patsy 
Hynes had bought in the contents of the room, say- 
109 


I IO A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 


ing he wanted them for the youngest of his girls, in 
a whisper meant only for Denys’s ear. 

“Maybe the little hussy won’t be content with 
them,” he said. “She has her heart set on a white 
suite from a Dublin shop, so maybe it’s a flea in my 
ear she’ll be giving me when I bring her this odd 

That was hopeful. He resolved to write to Patsy 
Hynes at once. Perhaps he had not removed the 
things yet. Stay, he would wire ! But no, he hardly 
knew how to make himself plain in the brevity of a 
wire. 

He turned to shake hands with Mrs. Metcalfe, 
who had to hear the whole wonderful story over 
again. To Mrs. Metcalfe it was not at all strange. 
Everything happened for the best, even if it seemed 
for the worst; they always had the Kind Hand over 
them. It was the Hand that had directed her 
brother to Denys, that day long ago, the Hand that 
had guided him when he chose Denys for his agent, 
one of the mad impulsive things as it seemed to mere 
human intelligence, which he was in the habit of 
doing. She was very glad to go back to Clogher, 
although she would have been quite well content to 
stay where she was if it was the Will. 

“You know you hated being dragged round the 
world, Aunt Sophie,” put in Dawn, “and you are 
really devoutly thankful to be getting back to your 
garden and your bees and your poultry and all your 
poor people at Clogher.” 

“I can improve the breed of poultry,” Mrs. Met- 
calfe said with a sigh, “now that the old ones have 
been sold. I never could bear killing them off. 
Some of them must have been very old. It is a bad 
habit to give your fowl names and make pets of 
them, for you come to feel as though they were 
persons. And the bees too. I want to begin with 


A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 1 1 1 


the new hives. I am so glad I put in those new 
fruit trees and that I did not neglect the garden last 
winter. It will be in full beauty this year.” 

“Fortunately, I thought of keeping the garden 
gate and the greenhouse locked during the days of 
the auction,” said Denys. “There was a big crowd. 
The people would have swarmed over everything, 
to say nothing of Mr. Mulcahy and his friends, who 
would have been very much the worst. Mr. Mul- 
cahy looked rather like a large doll and his blue eyes 
were innocence itself.” 

“I am very grateful to you, Mr. Fitzmaurice !” 
Mrs. Metcalfe said, with energy. “I could not have 
borne to see the place trampled.” 

“I brought the keys away with me by accident,” 
Denys said. “You shall have them, Mrs. Metcalfe.” 

Denys agreed to wait on the general return. He 
could not if he would, have torn himself from the 
presence of Dawn Finucane. They were all to go 
up to town next day. Mrs. Simmons was informed 
and remarked merely that she had not thought his 
lordship would stick it long; it was very dull after 
the neighborliness of Connaught. Simmons, as be- 
fitted his good training, merely bowed when he was 
informed of the new arrangements. 

Dawn, congratulating herself that she had un- 
packed only what she needed to go on with, because 
she knew Papa would never stand Malvern Wells 
any more than he had been able to stand Bath and 
Cheltenham and Bournemouth and Tunbridge 
Wells, commanded Denys to come out with her to 
bid farewell to certain darling things she had come 
to love — some people too. Denys was delighted and 
still dazed with the happiness of being so approved 
by everyone, particularly by Dawn. 

“Papa thought he could stick Malvern better than 
the other places,” Dawn explained, as they went 


1 12 A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 


down the hill by which Denys had come, “because 
his mother brought him to the Foley Arms at Great 
Malvern when he was quite a little boy, and the 
morning after their arrival pulled up the blind that 
he might look out. ‘Now, my dear,’ she said, ‘you 
are looking at the very heart of England.’ It really 
is that, — Shakespeare’s England, Chaucer’s Eng- 
land, Merrie England. Do you see that old house 
there? Margaret of Anjou fled there after the 
Battle of Tewkesbury. They have Katherine of 
Aragon’s trunk there with K. R. and the crown upon 
it in gilt nails. It is really a wonderful country, apart 
from its loveliness; but the place is too ‘churchy’ for 
Papa. And it has so many different kinds of ‘church- 
iness’ that, as he says himself, he never knows where 
it is.” 

They visited a little farm-house where they were 
received by a little woman who had the most gentle 
expression, Denys thought, that he had ever seen in 
a human face. The garden in front of the little 
house was tight-packed with fruit and flowers and 
vegetables. A most delicious apple tree covered 
with deeply pink blossoms stood up in front of the 
open hall door. The stairs within and the sitting- 
rooms looked as if they had been newly scrubbed. 
Flowers were up to the windows and the room in 
which they sat to taste Mrs. Mason’s cowslip wine, 
had a great pitcher of lilac on the table. 

Denys had to see the little house, which was all 
fresh and delicious. There were quaint small altars 
on the stairs and in the rooms, each with its flowers 
and its votive lamp. Dawn called his attention to 
the fact that the two little altars on the stairs had 
very tiny figures, the one at the foot of the stairs 
being even tinier than the one at the first landing, 
while that at the head of the stairs was bigger than 
either. 


A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 1 13 

“Mrs. Mason’s altars represent, according to 
Father Benedict, whose church is not far from us, 
Religion in its various stages, or the progress and 
evolution of Religion,” she said and laughed. “Isn’t 
Mrs. Mason a darling?” 

He did not answer, because Mrs. Mason appeared 
at the moment, carrying a little basket. 

“A few eggs for you, Miss Dawn,” she said. “It 
isn’t likely you will find eggs you could eat, in Lon- 
don.” 

The little woman watched them from her garden 
gate while they went up the hill, waving to them as 
long as she could see them. 

There was another visit to the house which had 
sheltered Margaret of Anjou, where a lady in black 
received them, and they were entertained by two 
delightful little boys, one of whom sat clasping his 
bare knees in both hands, looking as though he lis- 
tened to fairy music, till suddenly his whole face 
wrinkled and he rushed from the room, his mother, 
his nurse, and a maid who happened to be in the 
room, in hot pursuit. 

The other boy, a placid golden-haired child of 
five, remarked that Peter was going to be naughty. 

“Peter is always quiet when he’s going to be 
naughty,” he said. “Faver asked him one day to 
fink and not to talk. It were between two lamp- 
posts. When Peter goes for a walk wiv Faver and 
Muver he’s not allowed to talk between the lamp- 
posts. When Peter comes to a post he shuts his 
eyes and holds on hard till he’s said lot of fings. 
Peter said when Faver asked him to fink : ‘I’d better 
not; I might fink of something rude!’ Once he said 
a fearful word out loud in the middle of the night 
when everyone but himself were asleep. He told 
Faver Benedict and he larfed. The word were 
‘Bloomin’.” 


1 14 A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 


The fair child, whose name was Paul, relapsed 
into silence after this bit of biography, and presently 
Peter was brought back struggling and laughing. 
He had played a trick on his anxious guardians, for 
the thing he had secreted in his fat fist and tried to 
throw into the lake was but a small china elephant 
most indubitably his own, to do what he liked with. 

“I told them it were my little elephant, Paul,” 
said Peter with a smile of infinite zest. “They 
didn’t fink it were. They were all after me and I 
frowed it but it fell outside the water and Nanna 
picked it up. It weren’t even broken.” 

Paul grinned at the tale, but remarked sedately: 

“You are such a naughty boy, Peter, I wouldn’t 
be s’prised if the Devil took you.” 

“He’s always talking about the Devil,” Peter ex- 
plained with bright eyes of amusement. “He were 
pouring water in a hole in the garden one day, an’ 
the gardner said ‘Wotever are you a-doin’ of, Mas- 
ter Paul !’ And Paul said he were givin’ the Divil 
a drink. He must be firsty.” 

Peter and Paul’s mother wore a most helpless 
look during this narrative. She was a pretty, pink 
and white, fluffy-haired young woman. 

“They are always talking about the Devil,” she 
said. “I don’t know where they get it. I did forbid 
them mentioning his name, but they got other names 
so as it seemed to lead to deceit, I thought I’d 
better let them talk openly.” 

“Paul called the Divil sometimes Hammet an’ 
sometimes the Dear Man Laughin’ at You. Nanna 
said it fair give her the creeps,” put in Peter with 
his irresistible grin. “She told hin the Divil were 
only a pome. Do you think the Divil’s only a 
Pome?” 

“They are really dreadful,” said Mrs. Darrell. 
“I don’t know what their father will say when he 
comes home expecting to find two good little boys.” 


A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 1 15 

“Paul’s goin’ to cry,” said Peter, “same as when 
he’s got croup. Once he begins to cry he mightn’t 
leave off till next Monday. Nanna says ‘Oh, drat 
that child!’ when Paul begins to cry. When he 
were a kid he never went asleep without his Golliwog 
or else Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but he liked 
the Golliwog the best. He wouldn’t have a new 
Golliwog when the old one died. He bawled and 
bawled and frowed the new one in the fire.” 

Dawn, with the children, was a new revelation 
of delight to Denys. She pealed with laughter, and 
got down on her knees to kiss the solemn Paul, her 
face red as a rose with enjoyment. 

“Paul hates being kissed,” said Peter. “He went 
to a house where there were six aunts. Each kissed 
him when he corned in : then they kep’ walkin’ round 
the table to kiss him. Then they all Kissed him when 
he went away. Paul said he were kissed fifty hun- 
dred times. He were wipin’ off the kisses for two 
years. He said there was a lady there, not an aunt, 
an’ she hadn’t shaved, an’ she were drefful.” 

Despite Paul’s objection Dawn insisted on kissing 
him and he bore it with a stoic patience, while his 
mother murmured that she never saw such a little 
boy; he used to be nice to kiss, but lately he had 
taken a dislike to it. 

Dawn could hardly be torn away from Peter and 
Paul, but she left at last, having extracted a promise 
from Mrs. Darrell that she and Major Darrell, who 
was coming home for a good furlough in the sum- 
mer, and the little boys would come and visit them 
at Clogher. 

There was a third visit to a very ancient house, 
where an old lady and a middle-aged lady and a 
young lady sat in a room where the lamps were al- 
ready lit, for the road outside ran under a tunnel 
of trees, and the house, panelled in dark oak, with 
little diamond-paned windows muffled up in ivy, was 


ii 6 A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 


very dark. A fox terrier lay on the rug with his 
nose on his paws. Suddenly a light foot crossed the 
floor of the room overhead, and the dog, the hair 
rising along his back, retreated growling into a 
corner. 

“It is our ghost,” said the old lady quietly. “We 
only hear her; we do not see her. But Tim does 
not like her. He always shows fear like that,” and 
the quiet conversation flowed on as though nothing 
out-of-the-way had happened. 

Then they went home to supper with a plan of 
getting up early in the morning so that Dawn should 
say farewell to the fields and the hills and the 
thousand streams of the Common, all the inanimate 
friends ; and Denys was in felicity. 

But before he fell asleep his castle of dreams was 
to be laid in ruins. 

He and Lord Leenane sat up long after the ladies 
had gone to bed, with Monk lying between them. 
They talked of many things, and many schemes and 
plans were forecast and propounded. Leenane’s 
manner to him was almost as though he had been 
a son. 

But at the last, while they stood for a final word, 
Lord Leenane said with a hand on Denys’s shoulder : 

“You remember what I said about Dawn and the 
fifty thousand? That was an odd thing. I’m afraid 
Dawn has arranged her own future, or will arrange 
it. I don’t quite know how far it has gone, and I 
don’t ask Dawn. But I don’t mind telling you, 
Denys, that I don’t like the man. We saw a lot of 
him last summer when Dawn came out, and he 
turned up the other morning at the hotel and they 
went for a walk in Kensington Gardens, early, be- 
fore the nursemaids were about.” 

“Who is the man?” Denys tried to make his 
voice sound natural and he hoped he had succeeded. 


A CASTLE IN AIR FALLS DOWN 1 17 

“A man named Arundel, in the Coldstream. Not 
a penny to bless himself with. I can’t go against 
Dawn. She’s my only child, after all; all I’ve left. 
This money you’ve given me; — yes, given me, 
Denys — makes things possible for her. You see — 
you’ve been doing it for Dawn.” 

It was bitter. It was a knock-down blow. But 
Denys stood up to it. No one should know. 

Afterwards Lord Leenane had his misgivings. 
He talked to himself as he went to bed. 

“He showed breeding,” he said; “he showed 
breeding. I’m proud of Denys. What the deuce is 
there in Hilary Arundel that the women like?” 


CHAPTER XIII 
boy’s love 

jP\ ENYS went through his ordeal next morning in 
a way that proved him worthy of Lord Lee- 
nane’s commendations. He scaled the hill to the 
Beacon and looked over four shining counties from 
which the haze was just lifting. He walked in the 
fields where the grass was sown thick with flowers 
and the corn-crake had begun his monotonous saw- 
ing, and by the purling streams. The fields were as 
wet as a river with the dews that seemed to make 
Dawn Finucane’s eyes brighter and her color love- 
lier. She was wearing a blue dress that matched 
her eyes and grey stockings and shoes. Before they 
plunged into the deep grass she looked at him with 
a fearless eye. 

“I shall ruin my shoes and stockings, if I wear 
them in the wet grass,” she said, “and if you wear 
yours you will reduce the little boy who cleans our 
shoes to despair. I vote that we walk barefoot. It 
is so delicious walking in the wet grass barefoot.” 

She sat down on a stile with her back to him and 
pulled off her shoes and stockings, after which she 
plunged into the lush emerald grass which rose over 
her ankles. He had followed her example and they 
went side by side, Monk following them, puffing and 
panting. Her little white feet made a sort squishing 
sound in the wet grass and sometimes she kicked up a 
shower of silver that caught the reflections of the 
sun. 

There was not a creature about till, as they were 
going homeward, they passed more than one party 
of tramps, who had slept out-of-doors and were 
118 


BO Y’S LOVE 


119 

making their toilettes by a brook. The tramps were 
extremely affable. Dawn explained it by saying that 
they would have their breakfast, with sixpence 
added, at a great house of the neighborhood which 
had given a meal to any who asked in the Name of 
God, for many hundred years. 

“No wonder they look at peace with mankind,” 
said Denys, and found to his amazement that he was 
exceedingly hungry and had really a desire for his 
breakfast. He would have liked not to be able to 
eat, and anathematized the animal side of him, which 
could enjoy eating although his castle was down in 
ruins. 

“By the way,” said Dawn to him suddenly, “you 
have met a friend of mine in London lately.” 

Her cheeks were suddenly red and the young man 
chafed and fretted at the knowledge, feeling hor- 
ribly sore internally and that nothing mattered much 
in this world, despite the fact that he was hungry 
for his breakfast. 

“Yes?” he said, coldly inquiring. He was not 
going to help her out. 

“He is a Captain Arundel,” she said. “His sister 
Mary is a very dear friend of mine.” 

“I know. I met her at lunch yesterday before I 
came down.” 

“Oh ! You never told me !” 

“I did not know you knew her.” 

“Did you not talk of me then? She must have 
known that you were coming here.” 

“She talked so much of her brother that we got 
very little further.” 

“She adores her brother — and he her. It is pleas- 
ant to see such affection between sister and brother.” 

“Yes.” He was not very encouraging. 

“You met him at Mrs. Aarons’s house. She must 
be a very wonderful person.” 


120 


BOVS LOVE 


“She is — very wonderful.” 

“Such an odd marriage, — wasn’t it?” 

“Perhaps! Mr. Aarons is a very remarkable 
man. They seem devoted to each other.” 

“I hope to know her one day.” 

She passed easily from the subject of the Aarons, 
husband and wife, and began, with a little hesitation: 

“Did you ever meet a Miss Barton there?” 

“I did.” 

“Pretty?” 

“Charming.” 

“Oh! More charming than most people?” 

“Much. Rather like a Dark Rose.” 

“How poetic !” 

Dawn was visibly annoyed. She walked up the 
hill at a stiff pace which left her panting a little at 
the top. It was a breathless hill, dark, a tunnel of 
trees. At the top she turned and faced him, her 
breast rising and falling under the thin muslin of her 
blouse. 

“I believe Captain Arundel is devoted to Mrs. 
Aarons,” she said. 

“Very probably. I should think she wins devo- 
tion.” 

“Of course she is quite middle-aged, — is she not?” 

“Perhaps. A woman like Mrs. Aarons has no 
_ >> 
age. 

They went on side by side, stopping now and 
again to look over the wall beyond which lay the 
great stretch of shining country. 

“You cannot see Bredon,” she said. “He has dis- 
appeared into the mists. A good sign for the 
weather.” 

“Bredon?” 

“Yes, — Bredon Hill. Don’t you know the 
poem?” She lilted the song to herself in a soft 
undertone : 


BOY’S LOVE 


1 2 I 


In Summer time on Bredon 
The bells they sound so clear 

Round both the shires they ring them, 
In steeples far and near 
A happy sound to hear. 

Here of a Sunday morning 
My love and I would lie 

Aiid see the colored countries 
And hear the larks on high 
About us in the sky. 

# 

The bells would ring to call her 
In valleys far away: 

“Come all to church, good people, 
“Good people come and pray!” 

But here my love would stay. 

And I would turn and answer 
Among the springing thyme 

“Oh, peal upon our wedding 
And we will hear the chime 
And come to church in time.” 


It was set to a poignantly sweet and melancholy 
music that caught in the shining bells and the pastoral 
feeling of the Warwickshire Sunday morning. Denys 
felt the atmosphere of the poem as something un- 
known, unlike the bare bogs and mountain peaks he 
knew. He watched her as she sang, with a shy 
pleasure in the music she was making. There was 
not a creature in sight. They had met no one but 
the tramps and some school-children who had dipped 
to them, and had fondled Monk with a good fear- 
lessness. 

Her voice changed and became very sad: 

But when the snows at Christmas 
On Bredon top were strewn. 

My love rose up so early 
And stole out unbeknown 
And went to to church alone. 


122 


BOY'S LOVE 


They tolled the one bell only 
Groom there was none to see, 
The mourners followed after, 

And so to church went she 
And would not wait for me. 

The bells they sound on Bredon 
And still the steeples hum : 
“Come, all to church, good people, 
“Oh, noisy bells, be dumb. 

I hear you, I will come.” 


There were tears in her voice and in her eyes as 
she finished. 

“Thank you,” he said simply. “I shall always 
remember the song of Bredon Hill.” 

“It is a lovely setting,” she answered. “It makes 
a difference, looking across to Bredon, that there is 
that song.” 

They were in London by two o’clock and had 
lunch at the hotel, after which Lord Leenane and 
Denys set out on their business call on Mr. Hodge 
of Millar, Hardy and Hodge. Leenane was still a 
little doubtful of his good fortune and anxious to 
have the tidings of it confirmed. Since Denys had 
told him he had had alternating moods of confidence 
and doubt. Supposing Hodge was wrong. There 
was that fellow the other day, a famous expert, who 
pronounced a thing of lath and plaster under its 
composition, to be a bust by Praxiteles. Experts 
were wrong sometimes. The pictures might not be 
by Raeburn at all. They might be only clever copies, 
forgeries, frauds. He was hot and cold as he pro- 
pounded these doubts. Denys was glad he was go- 
ing to see Mr. Hodge, a person who inspired con- 
fidence. 

“I must have another opinion, or two or three, 
before I believe,” Leenane said, as they sat at lunch. 
“Better know the worst. It would be a horrible 


BOY’S LOVE 


123 

thing to close your hand on fifty thousand pounds 
and find emptiness, — eh Dawn, my lass?’* 

“Would it matter so much?” asked Dawn. 

There was something strange in her father’s eyes 
as they rested upon her. 

“Perhaps not, Dawn,” he answered, soberly. 
“Money is not always the best gift nor can it buy 
the best, but it can do a good deal.” 

They had taken a taxi. The taxi was yet new in 
London streets. Lord Leenane suggested that 
Dawn should go with them and wait on their inter- 
view with Mr. Hodge if she did not care to be 
present, but Dawn shook her head. The color came 
to her cheek. Her eyes were hidden under the long 
lashes. Denys looked away from this confusion, 
this self-revelation. His mood was one of a chill 
and angry despair. 

Lord Leenane pressed her no more. He was 
silent as he and Denys drove through the gay and 
crowded streets to Wellington Street. His eyes had 
a troubled look. 

They dismissed the taxi when they arrived at 
their destination. Mr. Hodge was in and disen- 
gaged. The interview was brief and eminently sat- 
isfactory. The pictures had already been seen by 
various art critics and eminent connoisseurs, who 
were agreed about them. 

“Raeburns, and very splendid examples,” Mr. 
Hodge said, with a slow kneading of his hands to- 
gether. “If they were mine nothing would induce me 
to part with them, although it is my business to sell 
not to buy. I hope they may be bought for the na- 
tion. Some American will want to buy them as soon 
as we advertise, and will probably offer you a fancy 
price. It would be a pity if they had to go to 
America.” 

They had tea with Mr. Hodge in his private 


124 


BO Y’S LOVE 


room. Lord Leenane was not elated as they walked 
into the street afterwards, from the unpretentious 
old-fashioned building which had altered little since 
the days of Queen Anne. He looked about him 
rather aimlessly as they stood a moment on the pave- 
ment. Then he came to a decision. 

“Let us walk up to the National Gallery and see 
the Raeburns,” he said. “I am, as perhaps you may 
have gathered, a faultlessly ignorant man about 
pictures. I should like to know what it is in a pic- 
ture that can make it worth a fortune.” 

But his inspection of the Raeburns was so per- 
functory as to make Denys suspect that for some 
reason or other Lord Leenane wanted to kill time — 
perhaps also to talk, and had chosen a quiet place. 

The gallery was almost empty this beautiful May 
afternoon. Far away one or two country visitors, 
catalogue in hand, walked from picture to picture. 
The noise of Trafalgar Square only reached their 
ears as a dull far-off rumble. 

They sat down on a seat side by side. Leenane 
suddenly revealed what was coming between him and 
his good fortune. 

“Dawn and I were always enough for each other. 
I am not enough for her now. It is hard luck when 
a man has only one little girl. I expect she is enter- 
taining Arundel this afternoon.” 

“Don’t you see, Denys,” he went on, “that this 
find of yours has made it possible? That is why I 
feel so deuced ungrateful. Arundel has not a red 
cent on which to keep my girl even if he was ‘All for 
Love and the World well Lost’ as I don’t believe 
he is. Upon my word, Denys” — he turned a sorrow- 
ful grey eye upon his companion, — “I am more than 
half inclined to hand you over the pictures and bid 
you sell them for your own purpose not for mine. 
They’re yours, man, — not mine.” 


BOY’S LOVE 125 

“I bought them in trust for you,” said Denys, 
steadily. 

“I wondered if . . . you would fall in with it. 
Never mind! I fear my girl’s heart is engaged. 
Perhaps he is better than I think him, hey, Denys? 
Not a man’s man: a woman’s perhaps.” 

“Perhaps they get below that foppish cold way 
of his which men dislike,” Denys said, sticking pas- 
sionately to his loyalty to Dawn, even while his heart 
was chill and full of pain within him. “Let me tell 
you, Lord Leenane; I ought to tell you. There is 
something in Arundel we do not see : he keeps it for 
women.” 

He went on to tell as much as he could remember 
of the letters Mrs. Aarons had shown him. He 
stumbled through the recital, conscious that he was 
not making much of a case after all for his rival. 

“It doesn’t seem much,” he concluded, lamely. “I 
haven’t been able to get the atmosphere of the 
letters. I know when I read them I felt that he was a 
good fellow, on one side of him, at all events.” 

“I can’t like him, I can’t like him, Denys,” Lee- 
nane said and shook his head sorrowfully. Denys 
said to himself that he was growing old. Something 
of pallor had descended on his ruddy hues ; he looked 
flabby, out of sorts, as though he needed the open air 
and exercise. 

“I’m glad we’re going back to Ireland to-morrow, 
or the next day,” he said. “I’d like the feel of a 
horse under me and a good gallop across the bogs. 
I am getting cobwebby.” 

He rose up and shook himself like a dog. 

“Let us go and buy a present for Dawn,” he said. 


CHAPTER XIV 

A LIGHT MAN 

T hey returned to the hotel to find that all their 
killing time had been in vain. Dawn had had 
no visitors. She came downstairs to them from her 
room with a higher color than usual, and very bright 
eyes and reproached them for having left her so 
long alone. Behind the high, smiling courage Denys 
conjectured eyes and a throat that ached. He won- 
dered at his own intuition. What did he know of 
the ways of girls? 

Leenane was kindly, clumsily tactful. He re- 
frained from asking how Dawn had spent her after- 
noon, talking instead, of what he and Denys had 
been doing. Again with the queer intuition Denys 
was aware of the father’s heart, that his hand could 
hardly refrain from going out to smooth Dawn’s 
ruffled hair under the little green cap she wore, that 
his lips could hardly forbear tenderness. 

It was nearly seven o’clock — too late to expect 
callers. 

From where they sat in the hotel lounge the en- 
trance hall, with its glass encased turnstile, was 
plainly visible. Every time anyone came through, 
Dawn gave a swift glance and looked away again. 

Leenane suggested early dinner and a theatre. 
Dawn would not much longer have a chance of seeing 
a play. There was something very good on at the 
Ambassador’s. Or was there anything she would 
like to do better. 

Dawn had no preferences. She was sweetly rea- 
sonable about doing what her father wished. The 
Ambassador’s then, be it. Denys went off to reserve 
126 


A LIGHT MAN 


127 


three stalls. When he came back he was aware that 
something had happened. The buff-colored envel- 
ope of a telegram lay on the little table in front of 
Dawn : the pink flimsy was in her hand. Her face 
had lifted surprisingly. So! she had heard from 
Arundel. 

“This is sad news of our friend Aarons,” said 
Leenane, as Denys came near. “He was run down 
by one of those infernal new contrivances this after- 
noon near the Bank of England. I wish I’d been 
born before motors were invented.” 

“Not killed?” said Denys in a shocked voice. He 
was rather surprised at discovering how much con- 
cern the money-lender’s accident caused him. 

“Not killed, but badly injured. He’ll be a loss 
to a good many people if he goes. I suppose he’s 
rather unique as a money-lender.” 

“It will be terrible for his wife,” said Denys, and 
began to think of the beauty and refinement of the 
money-lender’s houses and of the gracious person- 
ality of the woman for whom they made the proper 
setting. 

Dawn tried hard to keep the joy out of her face, 
but her relief was evident to the jealous lover, who 
suffered pangs while she talked cheerfully at dinner 
in her recovered ease of mind. He said to himself 
jealously that Dawn could not have been very sure 
of Arundel, since she was so distressed by his ab- 
sence. Then he reproached himself for the thought, 
forcing himself to remember that Arundel must have 
very good qualities since it was to him Rachel Aarons 
had turned in the moment of her necessity. The 
telegram had been extravagant of words. “Mrs. 
Aarons has sent for me. I shall not be able to leave 
her so long as she needs me. We await the medical 
report to-night.” 

Leenane grumbled over the telegram privately to 


128 


A LIGHT MAN 


Denys. It was like a man who had not two pennies 
to bless himself with, beyond the allowance some 
old lady gave to keep him in the Guards, to be so ex- 
travagant in telegrams. 

“You may have noticed,” he said. “He always 
wears the most extravagant things in flowers. His 
socks and neckties are things of beauty. He is 
dressed by Poole. Look at me! My clothes are 
made at home by the housemaid. I smoke fags. I 
look like an out-of-work.” 

Denys smiled. Lord Leenane did himself less 
than justice, but he was not a dandy. 

Dawn had come down to dinner wearing a frock 
of billowy white, all frills and flounces and ribbons 
and laces from which her golden head and fair face 
with the long beautiful neck, rose like Aphrodite 
from the sea. Her little decolletee was exquisitely 
modest. The twist of seed pearls about the milky 
young neck enhanced its warm beauty. Denys was 
dazzled, but nevertheless asked if he might slip 
away while the curtain raiser was on to get the latest 
report of Mr. Aarons’s condition. 

“Yes, go, go!” Lord Leenane said heartily, and 
remarked to Dawn when Denys had left them, that 
he had a good heart, a very good heart. 

It was only a short hansom drive to Stratfield 
Place. The summer evening in London was full of 
gaiety, such a gaiety as was eclipsed when the lifeless 
motor took the place of the horsed vehicles — strings 
of carriages and hansoms went up and down the 
West End streets, occupied by people smartly 
dressed, with happy faces, all going to functions of 
one kind or another. If Calach Care rode any of 
the gay throng he was not in evidence. 

Denys was caught in the westward-going stream. 
The eastward-going passed him by. He hardly no- 
ticed the people who were close to him when there 
was a block in the traffic. They were all young and 


A LIGHT MAN 


129 


happy, it seemed. What a jcontrast. He was on his 
way to see a man who was probably dying in pain. 
He had talked enough with Mrs. Aaron to know 
something of the misery of London. She had a 
philanthropic passion. What she said of the miser- 
able lives was said eloquently, out of a heart that 
burned to help and redress. 

Going down Oxford Street very slowly, for the 
street still bathed in the westward-sinking sun was 
thronged with vehicles, although the shops were shut 
and the foot-passengers wore a homeward-going, 
absorbed air, Denys was aware that many of the 
hansoms that passed him contained pairs of lovers. 
He was aware of the clasped hands, the eyes directed 
upon each other, the glowing and happy faces that 
sometimes, for decorum’s sake, tried to conceal the 
state of things. Other couples again were lovers 
unashamed. The hansom went smoothly for a few 
yards, then jerked abruptly, held up by the hansom 
in front. A bother, these frequent blocks I The 
lovers did not seem to mind. There was a charm- 
ingly pretty girl, with a piquant irregular face and a 
wide mouth, who said to the infatuated man sitting 
beside her, and the words reached Denys’s ear : “I do 
love this slow procession down Oxford Street, don’t 
you?” 

The man said something in an ardent whisper at 
which the girl laughed. Denys smiled but fidgeted. 
He might as well get out and walk, only that he was 
hemmed in by the traffic. 

Another jerk and the hansom moved on slowly. 
The eastward-going line passed by them. Suddenly 
Denys drew himself back into the corner of his han- 
som, the color rushing to his face and then ebbing 
away, leaving it cold and disdainful. The occupants 
of a hansom passing him slowly were Hilary Arundel 
and Margery Barton. 

Neither had seen him. The girl was looking down 


130 


A LIGHT MAN 


with her strange rapt gaze of happiness. Arundel’s 
face was turned towards her, boldly love-making. 
It was as though he tried to look under the lowered 
white lids into the girl’s eyes. 

The block broke up and Denys’s hansom getting 
free, jingled cheerfully the few yards between him 
and Stratfield Place. He was possessed by such a 
queer silent rage that no one would have suspected 
in the slight elegant young man who alighted and 
bade the driver wait for him. He said very bitter 
things in his mind of Hilary Arundel. So that was 
how he amused himself while Dawn Finucane waited 
for his coming! And Mr. Aarons’s accident? Was 
that a lie, an impudent invention? He said to him- 
self that Hilary Arundel was playing fast and loose 
with three women, not with Mrs. Aarons in the 
common obvious way; but, remembering Mrs. 
Aarons’s expression of tenderness as her gaze fell 
on Arundel, Denys said to himself that Arundel must 
have deceived her noble nature. The letter, in which 
he had seemed to reveal some answering nobility in 
himself, was a cheat. 

He had expected disorder at the house, but be- 
yond that there was a group of persons at the door 
asking the same question as he had come to ask, 
there was no sign. He had time to notice that the 
group was oddly assorted. A crossing-sweeper stood 
by a lady in deep black who might have been a 
Duchess, and when these had turned away, there 
came a consumptive-looking girl who might be a 
dressmaker’s apprentice or some such thing. 

“There goes my summer ’oliday!” she said, as 
she turned away, having been answered by the ser- 
vant that Mr. Aarons was very ill indeed. She had 
a small impertinent nose, and red hair crowned her 
peaked face. Denys looked after her as she went. 
He had an absurd inclination to say that she would 


A LIGHT MAN 


131 

not lose her summer holiday, but he repressed it. 
It was not a moment in which he could speak to 
Mrs. Aarons about it. 

The servant, who had worn an air of weary toler- 
ance for the poor women and an almost obsequious 
respect for the grande dame f brightened a little as 
he recognized Denys. 

“Mrs. Aarons would like to see you, sir, I am 
sure,” he said. “She is bearin’ up wonderful. Mr. 
Aarons is no better. In fact there’s no ’ope, sir, 
I’m sorry to say.” 

Denys had not expected to see Mrs. Aarons — but 
the man evidently expected that she would see him. 
He could not refuse, nor did he wish to, putting 
away from his mind the thought of Dawn and her 
father waiting for him at the Ambassador! He 
said to himself that Mrs. Aarons had been deceived 
in Hilary Arundel. He was all aflame with fierce 
indignation for her as well as for Dawn, and that 
poor passionate child, Margery Barton. 

“If you think she would like to see me, Davis; if 
it would not be too much for her, I should like to 
see her.” 

“Mrs. Aarons is as brave as brave,” said Davis, 
closing the door against another batch of inquirers 
who were just arriving. 

He put Denys to wait in the music room. A piece 
of music lay on the floor by the piano as though 
someone had flung it down hastily. That small sign 
of disorder where all was orderly struck coldly to 
his heart. 

He stood, hat in hand, watching the door. The 
dusk was in the room, but there was still a reflected 
gleam from the western sky that fell on the gilt 
organ-pipes and caught a Venetian mirror above the 
mantelpiece. He stood listening by the door from 
which steps led into the garden. The house was 


132 


A LIGHT MAN 


strangely silent. The muffled and faint sound of 
London which he had noticed before came as though 
from a great distance off. 

The door opened and Rachel Aarons came in. 
She approached him very quietly. 

“This is very kind,” she said, and took his hands 
in one of hers, laying the other softly over them. 

“The doctors hardly know how long it will last,” 
she said and her voice shook and broke. “I cannot 
pray for it to be long. He is terribly injured. He 
was a good man. Many people will be the poorer 
for his absence. 

“How did it happen?” Denys asked, in a whisper. 

“As you might expect. A frightened woman ran 
under the bonnet of a motor, and when she tried to 
get on to a street refuge slipped and fell back again. 
My husband was waiting on the refuge. He sprang 
to catch her and the motor caught him before they 
could pull up. The poor woman was saved.” 

“A good way to die,” said Denys. 

Her eyes shone on him with a sudden radiance as 
though they had caught some of the gold of the 
western sky. 

“He would have been satisfied,” she said. “When 
people talk of ‘mean as a Jew’ and ‘a Jew’s bargain,’ 
remember, Mr. Fitzmaurice, that you knew one Jew 
who was a good man and unselfish so that even 
money-lending became generous in his hands. 

“I shall remember.” 

“Now I must go back to him,” she said in a low 
voice. “We have never been separated since our 
marriage. These are my last hours. He would like 
to know that you were sorry. He had a high opinion 
of you.” 

So, with a sad finality she set Simon Aarons among 
those who had been and were not. 

“Can I do anything for you?” Denys asked eag- 


A LIGHT MAN 


133 


erly. He had come more and more to feel the gra- 
cious charm of Rachel Aarons — and he stammered 
in his eagerness as he offered her service. 

“Nothing,” she said. “I am very grateful. Cap- 
tain Arundel has been here with me. I have just sent 
him out with little Margery Barton, who was stay- 
ing here when ... it happened. I wanted to send 
her away home, but she begged to stay with me. It 
is not right to burden young people with one’s own 
sadness. I told him to take her somewhere, to give 
her a breath of air. They were most unwilling to 
leave me.” 

“Yes,” said Denys lamely and recalled the two he 
had seen in the hansom, entirely absorbed in each 
other, forgetful of the grief and desolation they had 
just left. 

“It is good of you to come,” she said again, going 
with him towards the door. “I had no idea that you 
were coming back so soon.” 

“It is only for a few days ; I had business,” he said. 

“I shall always remember that my husband liked 
you so much,” she said, leaving him at the foot of 
the great staircase. 


CHAPTER XV 
lovers’ way 

T he morning they left London, Denys read in 
The Times that Simon Aarons was dead. He 
had not been expected to live through the night, 
when he had called to make enquiries. 

Reading his Times , while the London houses grew 
thinner and thinner and finally gave way to green 
fields and quietly grazing cattle, Denys was never- 
theless aware or Dawn in her corner pretending to 
read one of the magazines he had bought for her, 
her little face very cold and set. They had stayed 
two days longer in London and Hilary Arundel had 
made no sign. Leenane was very ill-at-ease and 
kept sending queer tender half-resentful looks at his 
girl. They had dawdled through those two days, 
after all their business was finished. Denys knew 
with a quiet rage that they were waiting for Dawn 
to see Hilary Arundel. Leenane, who had 
never been untender to his girl since she was born 
had devised reasons for staying, sending now and 
again furtive, shame-faced, apologetic looks Denys’s 
way. 

Denys glanced up from his paper to intercept one 
of those looks. Something of relief was mingled 
with its other elements. 

“Mr. Aarons is dead,” he said, without turning 
his head towards Dawn’s corner seat. 

“I am very sorry,” Leenane answered. “He 
ought to have lived forever. Sorry for the poor 
woman too, although I’m hanged if I know how she 
134 


LOVERS’ WAY 


135 


came to marry him. They said she could have had 
her pick and choice when her lovely voice set London 
raving. 

“I can understand the marriage,” Denys said. 

“Oh, you can, can you?” returned Leenane, 
“You’re the only person I ever heard say it. Lots 
of people put down the decent things he used to do 
to her influence.” 

“She was his almoner,” Denys said. “He made 
her that.” 

He was aware without looking that Dawn had 
come out of her abstraction and was listening, as he 
conjectured, with an almost painful interest. She 
sank back in her seat presently and resumed her 
listless gazing over the flying landscape. If she had 
expected to hear Hilary Arundel’s name it was not 
spoken. 

But it was not in Dawn’s bright spirit to carry her 
heart on her sleeve, or not for long. After a while 
she was talking and laughing, looking forward to 
going home, imagining the welcome the dogs would 
give her, how pleased the people would be to see 
her, what progress the gardens would have made, 
how much the tiny fluffy balls of chicks and ducklings 
would have grown since she had left them. 

Leenane brightened up wonderfully with Dawn’s 
cheerfulness. He looked across at Denys to see if 
he had noticed it, and Denys nodded reassuringly, 
such a slight nod that it might pass unobserved. 
The two men were very shy of their secret under- 
standing over the girl both loved. 

“When Dawn is away for a week she thinks it 
has been months,” said Leenane. “She expects so 
much growth. Once when we came home in May 
from six weeks in Rome she had to take a lantern 
to see how the things were growing. It was night 
when we arrived. She had only left the stables and 


1 36 


LOVERS’ WAY 


the poultry yard alone because she thought the dis- 
turbance of their slumbers by the flashing of her 
light might keep the beasts awake.” 

Both men laughed while Dawn said that the fowl 
at least would have fallen from their perches at the 
untimely introduction of light. 

Denys wondered jealously if Dawn had begun to 
look forward to finding some message from Arundel 
on her arrival at Castle Clogher. It might be that 
her native spirit and courage were reasserting them- 
selves. He hoped it was that. Presently Leenane 
slept in the comfortable way men have of passing a 
railway journey, and Dawn asked a question or two 
about Mrs. Aarons. The questions led Denys on 
to talk, and he described Mrs. Aarons and the house- 
hold at Stratfield Place and Homewood with quiet 
enthusiasm. 

“It is terrible that a tie so perfect should be 
broken by death,” he said. 

Dawn’s eyes were shadowy and full of lambent 
light. 

“Ah,” she said with strange wisdom, “but how 
good it was that he went before her.” 

“Why, you are right,” said Denys. “He would 
have been lost without her.” 

At Bletchley a number of Americans got in. They 
had been visiting Penn and were on their way to 
other pilgrimages. Leenane woke up and made 
room for the ladies. There was a large party of 
them, and they looked like “school-marms,” as in- 
deed they proved to be. When Leenane had piled 
away all their baggage, the elder of the party looked 
at him with shrewd bright eyes which relieved the 
plainness of the colorless face, and remarked: 

“You are very obliging, sir. An American might 
do as much as that for his own women-folk. We 
don’t expect it from strangers.” 


LOVERS’ WAY 


137 


They were on their way to Lichfield to make a 
Johnson pilgrimage. Apparently they spent all their 
tour in making pilgrimages and were greedy for 
more. Six pairs of bright, narrow eyes were fixed 
on Denys while he made itineraries. Leenane lis- 
tened with admiration and Dawn with obvious in- 
terest. 

“We think, sir, that you are very obliging and 
very well informed,” said the spokeswoman of the 
party when Denys had planned them enough pil- 
grimages to last out their time. “You see, sir, we’ve 
saved for many years for this trip to Europe and 
we can’t afford to lose one thing we ought to see.” 

At Lichfield they went off profuse in thanksgiving. 
They all had handbags which they carried themselves 
without any intervention of porters. Their late fel- 
low-passengers watched them as they trooped out of 
the station, austere and efficient in their grey gar- 
ments and absence of any kind of ornament. 

“They’re inquisitive,” said Leenane. “They want 
to know all the time. Only America could turn out 
such a party as that.” 

Then he asked Dawn if she was not amazed at 
Denys’s learning, and Dawn replied that she was, 
laughing at Denys with a fresh rosy beauty like 
Aurora’s — the shadows of the morning fled away. 

It was a beautiful bright day. The country 
through which they were passing was still in the 
glory of the young greenery. It was hot although 
both windows were open and Leenane turned again 
to his slumbers as easily as a dog. 

Denys sitting opposite to Dawn had a vision so 
dazzling that his head reeled. He imagined what it 
would be if he and Dawn were flying somewhere on 
their wedding journey. For a second or two he 
yielded to the delicious dream; then came shame- 
faced out of it to find Dawn’s clear eyes regarding 


138 


LOVERS’ WAY 


him. He blushed suddenly and painfully, as if she 
could have known. 

“What were you thinking about, Denys?” she 
asked. Of late she had taken to calling him Denys 
like her father. “You looked as though you were 
falling asleep. A penny for your thoughts !” 

“They were worth much more than that,” he said, 
and tried to say it lightly. 

“But you were blushing, Denys,” she persisted and 
then she was suddenly shy while Lord Leenane 
opened his eyes and asked who was blushing, adding 
before relapsing into sleep, that he thought blushing 
had gone out with the Victorian age. 

After that awkward moment Denys did not trust 
his thoughts. He kept asking himself what that 
sudden shyness of Dawn’s portended, while he kept 
his eyes fixed on the Times ) which he had picked up 
from the floor where Leenane had dropped it. He 
tried to fix his attention as well as his eyes, but in 
vain. Dawn had gone back to her book. It was 
“A Pair of Blue Eyes” by Thomas Hardy. He had 
commented on her choice of a book earlier, saying 
that not many girls of Dawn’s age would have se- 
lected it from among the follies and worse of the 
book-stall. She was absorbed in the story. That 
was good, he said to himself, and was aware of the 
round white wrist as he was aware of the line of 
cheek, the little ear, the sweep of delicate dark eye- 
brow and the convolutions of the clustering curls 
about her neck that had bronzed in the shadowed 
gold. 

Leenane left them on the boat and went below. It 
was raining at Holyhead after the radiant day and 
there were cat’s-paws on the water'of the harbor. 

“We’ll see Erin in tears as we usually do,” said 
Leenane. “I’m going to make myself decently 


LOVERS’ WAY 139 

scarce,” and he disappeared through the door of the 
companion. 

“Do you feel like facing it?” Denys asked. The 
brine was already in his eyes and on his lips. “It 
will be a rough passage.” 

“I shall love it,” she returned. “The last time I 
made the Channel passage the seas washed over me 
while I sat wrapped up in a sailor’s oilskin with a 
sou’wester on my head.” 

“I’ll see if I can fit you out,” said Denys and went 
off to find an obliging sailor who, for a consideration 
would supply the desired articles. 

By the time he had secured them the boat had left 
the harbor and was out in a greenish sea which 
heaved slowly with the most uncomfortable sugges- 
tion for the bad sailor. He wrapped Dawn in a big 
oilskin, having found a sheltered place for the two 
deck-chairs : he had another for himself with a third 
to wrap about their knees. She had exchanged her 
pretty hat for a sou’wester, bidding him give over 
the hat to the charge of the stewardess, who came 
and looked at them doubtfully from the door of the 
ladies’ cabin. 

There must have been something that suggested 
a tip about Denys, for the woman was almost ob- 
sequiously friendly. 

“I’ll have my hands full here presently, sir,” she 
said. “I don’t know if your lady is a good sailor but 
I’ll keep a sofa for her. You’ve only to call me and 
I’ll come.” 

“Your lady.” Delicious tremors ran through 
Denys’s blood. He glanced half fearfully at Dawn, 
eclipsed in the sou’wester and oilskins. Had she 
heard? No, apparently she had not heard, for her 
gaze was toward the slimy, slowly moving mass of 
green water, that was now above their heads, again 
under their feet, as the boat rolled. 


140 


LOVERS’ WAY 


“She is a good sailor,” he answered hurriedly. 

“A sweet pretty creature,” the stewardess said, 
lowering her voice. “A good thing she’s a good 
sailor. I wonder that ladies who are not should 
ever begin married life on the sea.” 

A loquacious good-natured woman. Denys was 
pink to the ears and the woman looked at him ap- 
provingly, as she returned into the ladies’ cabin with 
the gauzy hat. 

“I never saw one more in love,” she said to her- 
self, and then sighed for her own widowhood. 

Denys went back shyly to Dawn who turned her 
full luminous eyes on him, in a smiling welcome. 
Apparently she had heard nothing. He thought her 
little face sweeter than ever in the incongruous shade 
of the sou’wester. As he sat down beside her he could 
see just the soft lips, very young, and a little sad, the 
upper lip still a little full as though she had not left 
enchanting childhood behind for enchanting girlhood. 

He would have covered her knees with the oilskin 
but she would not have it. It must serve them both, 
so Denys sat by his affinity so close that he could feel 
the warmth of the contact in a state of felicity. 

Presently the swell was heavier, the deck was 
quickly deserted except for one or two hardy persons 
who stood hands in pockets, feet wide apart, bal- 
ancing themselves at an angle of forty-five degrees. 

Now and again their chairs skidded and they 
laughed. The spray drenched them and a big wave 
slapped over the side and just fell short of them. 
Except for a passing sailor, in a tremendous hurry, 
they were alone. The monotonous thump-thump of 
the screw went on somewhere near at hand. Dawn 
laughed with exhilaration as the wave, splashed on 
the deck, ran almost to their feet and retreated to 
the scuppers; her eyes shone out of the sou’wester 


LOVERS’ WAY 


141 

and her curls were moist little rings of gold curling 
more wildly for the damp. 

“Just think of Papa!” she said, “and all those 
poor things downstairs. Oh!” — as another wave 
broke, — “I should like it to go right over us. It 
wouldn’t really wet us in these things, Denys, would 
it?” 

He answered, trying to keep the leaping joy out 
of his voice, that he thought they were quite safe in 
the oilskins. 

“When I was a child,” Dawn went on in a reminis- 
cent voice, “I used to make plays for myself. I was 
rather lonely you know, Denys, after Maurice went 
away to school, and I was still quite little. I used 
to hide inside my bed curtains and think the jungle 
was outside. There was an accommodating little 
maid who did the lions and tigers so well that my 
imagination ran riot and I had a screaming fit of 
terror one night. After that she refused to play any 
longer. It was in the hour when my old Nanna was 
at her supper in the servants’ hall. I did not betray 
Rose, but I had frightened her, and I frightened my- 
self. I remember looking out fearfully at her just 
before the impersonation became too much for me 
and saying: ‘Don’t be a lion; be Rose.’ But she was 
roaring so ferociously that she did not heed me.” 

“Poor little thing,” said Denys tenderly. He 
wanted the very nasty passage to go on forever. 
Fearfully he looked forward to Howth looming up 
and the Poolbeg Light. He glanced at his watch in 
a furtive terror, and then sighed his relief. They 
had two hours more before leaving the open sea. 

She chattered to him and her wet cheeks were 
brilliant; the drops of spray hung on her curls and 
her eyelashes. She had taken off her gloves and lie 
insisted on her keeping her hands under the oilskin. 


142 


LOVERS’ WAY 


For a moment she laid her hand upon his to show 
how wet it was. 

He said to himself that she could not after all, 
care so much for Hilary Arundel since she was so 
ready to forget and be happy. Presently the sky 
lightened a bit and the wind was quieter and the 
stewardess came out of the ladies’ cabin with a shawl 
about her ears. 

“You don’t think your lady would like to come in 
now, sir?” she said. “We shall have worse weather 
before we are done with it.” 

“I am enjoying it immensely,” said Dawn who 
was always charming with simple people. “It is so 
very kind of you to think of me. But I am really 
much better here than I should be in the ladies’ 
cabin. Thank you so much for looking after my 
hat.” 

“Not at all, ma’am,” said the woman, standing 
smiling at her. “As long as you’re not afraid of 
neuralgia ; I’m racked with it.” 

“Oh, poor thing 1” said Dawn. “Imagine neural- 
gia 1 and having to live on a boat ! Please go right 
in out of this wind. I am so sorry.” 

The stewardess went off, and Dawn turned 
amused eyes on Denys. 

“Did you hear her call me ‘ma’am,’ Denys?” she 
asked. “It is a delightful way our people have of 
calling a girl ‘ma’am,’ and an old woman ‘miss.’ 
Father says it is because the girls wish to be ‘ma’ams’ 
and the older ladies wish to be ‘misses’ and the 
people are so polite that they address them accord- 
ing to their wishes.” 

Denys was relieved that Dawn had not under- 
stood the implication underlying the stewardess’s 
words; but presently she turned toward him and 
laughed a delightful gay young laugh. 

“Do you know, Denys,” she said, “I believe the 


LOVERS’ WAY 


143 


stewardess thought we were a honey-mooning 
couple ?” 

“Oh, I think not, I hope not,” murmured Denys 
lamely. 

“It sounds very rude,” said Dawn and laughed 
again. “Do you think I look like a bride, Denys? 
Or you like a groom? We should have to have 
new portmanteaux and new boots and all sorts of 
uncomfortable things.” 

He was glad there was nothing of consciousness 
in her voice. He had trembled when he imagined 
her reading the presumption of his thoughts. 

At Kingstown, when Dawn had gone into the 
ladies’ cabin to set her lovely dishevelment right he 
waited for her and the stewardess came out to tell 
him she would not be long. He felt a queer grati- 
tude towards the woman who thought Dawn his 
precious possession. He gave her a regal tip and 
moved away when she would have wished him hap- 
piness because he had caught a glimpse of Lord 
Leenane coming out of the companion, glancing here 
and there in search of Dawn and Denys. 


CHAPTER XVI 

THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 

D URING the days that followed the home-coming 
— Denys had pushed on home, leaving Leenane 
and Dawn to stay a night at the Shelbourne and 
come on next day — there was plenty for him to do. 
He found his father inclined to grumble gently at 
his absorption in the affairs of the Leenanes. 

“There’s a deal to do at home, lad,” he said. 
“The hay’s ready for cuttin’ and not much labor to 
do it. It’s a great summer. If the water doesn’t 
run low it should be a good year for the cattle. I 
wonder what at all we’d do for the water if the bogs 
were run dry as you talk of doin’ ?” 

“There’d always be plenty of water in Ireland,” 
said Denys and laughed. 

“I often wondered,” went on the old man, 
“whether the Lord put the bogs there if He meant 
them to be drained dry. You might be goin’ too 
fast, lad, doin’ more than ever you were meant to 
do.” 

Denys only laughed and bent his back to the work. 
The laborers who had touched their caubeens to 
Mr. Denys newly home from college and received 
on equal terms by the Leenanes, looked at him with 
an added respect when he showed that he meant to 
see the work done and help to do it. It was good 
to see his young graceful figure bend to the sweep of 
the scythe : he had not forgotten the art and he had 
kept himself fit during the school and college years. 
After a few days there appeared the newest Ameri- 
can mower and reaper which gleaned the little fields 
with a stately swinging stroke. Denys had been to 
144 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


145 


Dublin to buy it and had learnt to drive it, and he 
gave the peasants their first lessons on the use of 
the labor-saving appliance. It was true that there 
was little labor to be had. The young people had 
flocked away to America for so many springs and 
the little farms required all the energies of their 
owners. The men stood and stared with admiration 
when Denys sprang into the little iron seat and drove 
the machine. It was to be let out for hire, he told 
them, and there would be no longer the hard pain- 
ful saving of the harvest which took so many days 
that the rain was bound to come and ruin it before 
it could be saved. 

One of those days Denys, in his shirt-sleeves and 
coatless, brought the machine back to where a little 
group stood by the gap in the hedge. He had the 
tan and the sweat of the laboring man; it was the 
hottest May the countryside remembered and 
in a few days he had grown a fine mahogany color 
below the line of white under his broad-brimmed hat. 
His arms brown and strong would have delighted a 
painter or a sculptor. He said to himself that he 
dripped sweat; the little drops were on his brow and 
his upper lip, and he had a fastidious dislike to ap- 
pearing in such a heated condition before Dawn 
Finucane. 

He brought the machine gallantly to the end of 
the long palish green swathe and sprang out of the 
seat, handing the tackle to a tall boy with fine clas- 
sical features and large dreamy eyes who was stand- 
ing by. 

“See if you can drive her straight now, Mick,” 
he said. “Wait; I’ll turn the horses for you.” 

He had lifted his hat towards the waiting group. 
Dawn was there and Lord Leenane, and an old lady 
whom he had not seen before, who was talking to 
his father. 


146 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


“All right, Denys! We’ve come to see your new 
contraption,” Leenane called out in his great jolly 
voice. It was wonderful how he had recovered his 
joviality of late. 

Denys with an apology, sprang back to the ma- 
chine and turned the horses easily. Then he came to 
the earth again and went towards the group un- 
easily conscious of his disarray under Dawn Finu- 
cane’s eyes. 

“How nice you look, Denys,” she said. “You’ve 
got splendidly brown. What a jolly thing a hayfield 
is!” 

“Not fit to shake hands,” said Denys looking at 
the ungloved hand she held out to him. 

A curious sense had come to him of something 
inimical, unfriendly, in the large old lady who was 
looking at him with calm blue eyes from under the 
shadow of the lace veil, which was turned back over 
her ample, old-fashioned bonnet. She was extremely 
good-looking. Her hair was iron-grey and beauti- 
fully waved; her complexion still brilliantly pink and 
white, had cracked a little in the pink and there were 
a few furrows about her mouth and at the corner 
of her eyes. Her nose was aquiline and she had a 
rapid, dominant look which now measured Denys 
with a certain appraisement. 

He did not need to be told who she was. She 
was of course the Dowager Lady Leenane, a very 
redoubtable person. She had been living in Italy 
and travelling about for some years past, but the 
country had a good many legends or her, mostly 
of the grimly humorous sort. 

“Here is my mother, Denys, come home to set us 
all straight,” said Leenane. “Mr. Fitzmaurice of 
Murrough, Mother!” 

“Ah ! it is a long time since there were Fitz- 
maurices of Murrough,” said the Dowager and in- 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


147 


spected Denys through her lorgnette. “I met a 
a Fitzmaurice at Bordighera one year — Lizzie Fitz- 
maurice.” 

“The younger branch of the family,” said Denys 
and grew very red. 

“She said she was a Fitzmaurice of Murrough,” 
the Dowager replied freezingly. “She used to dance 
very well indeed till she was not of an age to dance; 
it was unseemly. Hunting now, or swimming; I 
believe I could do both if I tried, still. She gave 
up dancing suddenly. Not an hour nor a day too 
soon. She was brought to her senses by a dapper 
fellow asking her hand for a waltz and claiming her 
acquaintance. ‘Who may you be?’ she asked. He 
had been, at their last meeting, a child of three and 
she a buxom young woman of five and twenty. All 
of a sudden, she said afterwards, the ballroom was 
full of ghosts — Dick who died in South Africa, 
Jack w T ho broke his neck at the big jump at Punches- 
town — Archie who asked her to wait for him when 
he went to India and never came back, all the part- 
ners she had danced with in her good days : she was 
forty-five if she was a day. She refused the little 
chap his waltz. ‘Go and ask a girl,’ she said, and 
went straight home from the ballroom. ‘A pity it 
didn’t happen sooner,’ said I when she told me. ‘An 
old fool’s the worst fool of any’.” 

This recital was addressed to Leenane in a high 
unsympathetic voice which somehow rasped Denys’s 
nerves. He was still standing before the Dowager 
as though he waited to catch her eye. 

“That was hard on the poor lady,” grumbled 
Leenane disapprovingly. 

Dawn was caressing the dog at her feet, Rory 
still, though with a white muzzle and chronic rheum- 
atism. Suddenly the old lady flashed round again 


148 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


upon Denys who was standing with a curious new 
awkwardness, quite unlike his usual ease. 

“You’d better put on your coat, young man and 
don’t be standing there looking indecent and getting 
a cold as well,” she snapped out. 

Denys flushed and made a dive for his coat which 
was lying on the ground nearby. 

“Never mind my mother, Denys,” said Leenane. 
“She prides herself on speaking her mind.” 

“Hoity-toity! why should the young man mind?” 
the terrible Dowager asked. “I remember his father 
— a very respectable man with a pretty wife a bit 
above the work of a small farm. This boy is like 
her.” 

Dawn had walked away. How grateful Denys 
felt that Dawn had walked away! She was quite 
out of hearing. He felt that the Dowager was 
putting him in his place ; he had been forgetting for 
so long that he had a place. 

The laborers were loitering to hear. Mick Gan- 
non having cut a long irregular swathe had drawn 
the horses up with a jerk close by the group. 

“We drove over to see you and your father, 
Denys,” Leenane said unhappily. “I’m afraid we’re 
interrupting the work.” 

“My father is in the house,” returned Denys, tak- 
ing off the coat which he had put on. “He is strug- 

f ling with his accounts ; I ought to do them for him. 
am always so busy with other things.” 

He said good-bye without offering his hand, 
and returned to the seat of the machine while Lee- 
nane and the Dowager strolled toward the low 
farmhouse. 

Their way led them round the field which Denys 
was cutting, along the other side of a thick hedge- 
row. It was the field he had snatched from the bog, 
a rich field of which he was very proud. Mick Gan- 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


149 


non and the others were turning the hay as it fell 
with their long rakes; it was very heavy this year 
and full of sap. 

The Dowager’s voice came stridently to him as 
the machine clattered on its way to the distant hedge. 

“Quite time I came back, Leenane,” she said. “I 
don’t see my granddaughter associating with a 
young farmer on apparently equal terms.” 

“He has as good blood as we have,” said Leenane 
sulkily. 

The answer was lost upon Denys, who had turned 
about the horses and gone back. 

He let tea-time go by though he was thirsty for 
his tea. It was not until he had heard the Leenane 
carriage drive away that he gave up his seat to Mick 
Gannon and, bidding him drive a straight furrow 
went toward the house. His father came to meet 
him, holding a long blue envelope in his hand. 

“I meant to have brought you this before, lad,” 
he said. “It came an hour or two ago. That old 
woman put it out of my head. Why didn’t you come 
in to your tea? She said she wanted her tea so I 
told Maggie to make it, and the old lady seemed to 
enjoy it. She has a wonderful memory and a great 
appetite. I wonder what age she is at all?” 

“She looks very fresh,” said Denys mechanically. 
He made no effort to open the envelope which was 
in his hand. 

“She does then — she’s as pink as an old rose, 
though ’tis the thorny rose she’d be. I couldn’t help 
tellin’ her she’d excelled them all for beauty. She 
liked the compliment well.” 

“Most women do — from you,” said Denys, eyeing 
his father with a certain tenderness. Pat Fitzmau- 
rice could never refrain from an innocent roguish 
compliment to a woman. 

“I remember her a lovely young woman,” went 


150 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


on his father. “Though there was always the bitter- 
ness under her tongue. Leenane’s father loved her 
till the day he died, for all her sharp ways. You’d 
be surprised at her — she was an O’Grady of Clare — 
that could never keep herself from rapping out a 
‘damn’ if she wanted to. Perhaps she never tried 
to keep herself. There was an Archdeacon 
O’Rourke over at Lisnestragh — he’s dead and gone 
out of it years ago — took it on himself to speak to 
her about her love of the cards — she was a great 
player, and she’d keep putting up the stakes — many 
a night she stood up after losing more than the Lee- 
nanes could afford. The Archdeacon was a sour- 
faced little man. She called him a ‘damned whip- 
per-snapper’.” 

“I suppose I might as well open this,” said Denys, 
smiling unhumorously over this reminiscence of the 
Dowager. 

“Aye, do, lad. It looks like a big bill, or a Gov- 
ernment letter.” 

Denys opened the long blue envelope with little 
curiosity. He was too much obsessed by the Dow- 
ager’s insolence toward him. 

He had not troubled to look at the flap else he 
would have seen that it bore the inscription “Wilson, 
Collyn and Wilson, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.” Not that 
the name would have conveyed more to him than 
the fact that it was in all probability a legal docu- 
ment of some kind. 

He took out the folded letter from the envelope 
and read it through without betraying any excite- 
ment. For the moment he was so bitter at being 
put in his place that he had little capacity for any 
other kind of feeling. He had been humiliated 
under the eyes of Dawn Finucane and his blood was 
hot within him. 

It was a surprising document all the same. His 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 15 1 

father’s blue eyes — blue and unstained as a child’s — 
looking at him in anticipation smote him sharply as 
little things about his father had a way of doing. 
Why should these people, the Leenanes, have caught 
him into their lives and interests, leaving his father 
so much alone. 

“Mr. Aarons has left me ten thousand pounds 
absolutely,” he said. “He has also expressed a wish 
that I might borrow from the estate another ten 
thousand pounds for my reclamation scheme at 2 per 
cent.” 

“Ten thousand pounds,” repeated Pat Fitzmau- 
rice with an air of stupefaction. “Did you say ten 
thousand pounds? And it might be ten thousand 
straws for all you seem to care.” 

Denys came out of his dream. 

“I’m very glad, father,” he said. “It is a great 
stroke of luck. I’d like to think it would make life 
easier for you, now that we have all this money. I 
ought to have been lifting your burdens all these 
years.” 

“Indeed, I’d rather have you as you are, lad,” 
said Pat Fitzmaurice, looking at his son with naive 
pride. “It wouldn’t suit you at all to be gettin’ up 
in the mornin’ and goin’ to fairs. You’d look queer 
and out of place standin’ in the fair of a wet mornin’ 
waitin’ for the man that would buy your cattle.” 

“It is what I should have been doing instead of 
you,” said Denys, with sudden sharp remorse. He 
remembered to have heard through his dreams in 
the dusk of morning Patsy Kearns calling his father 
over and over to get up and go down to Drum Fair: 
“Are you awake, sir? Are you awake, sir?” and 
the sleepy answer, till at last his father’s footsteps 
went heavily down the creaking stairs. “Why should 
I work for others and leave your work to yourself 
who ought to have a rest?” 


152 


THE DOWAGER ARRIVES 


“Now don’t be talkin’ that way,” said Pat Fitz- 
maurice anxiously. “You wouldn’t be thinkin’ of 
doin’ anything foolish. Throwin’ up the agency or 
anything like that? As for rest, I’ll never be an old 
man in the chimney-corner. When I lay the work 
aside I hope its settin’ out to find your mother I’ll 
be and not to be a useless old carcass of a man.” 

Father and son for the moment seemed to have 
forgotten the amazing fact that Denys had just re- 
ceived a legacy of ten thousand pounds. Now Pat 
Fitzmaurice reverted to it. 

“What will you do at all with the big lump of 
money?” he asked. 

“I know one thing I shall do,” Denys replied, 
and his eyes were full of dreams. “I shall buy up 
the fields about Murrough and the old ruin itself. 
I’d like to have it back in our hands.” 

“A pity you wouldn’t live in it,” said Pat Fitz- 
maurice. “There’s some of the rooms not too bad. 
If there was glass in the windys and a floor to the 
rooms and a bit of roof over it, it wouldn’t be too 
bad.” 

“For the present I’m afraid the Fitzmaurice 
ghosts must have it,” said Denys. “If some of my 
dreams should come true — well, who knows? — 
there might be room for us and the ghosts.” 


CHAPTER XVII 

“SUMMER BUT WHERE’S THE ROSE?” 

X^OR some days Denys devoted himself to saving 
his father’s hay, as though he had never been 
Lord Leenane’s agent at all. Then came the diver- 
sion of the sudden, unexpected appearance of Mark 
Lefroy, his tutor at Cambridge, upon the scene. 

Denys had something like hero worship for Mark 
Lefroy, a tall, thin youngish man with a tired satiri- 
cal face, contradicted by the gentleness of his grey 
eyes. Lefroy was a great sportsman, as well as a 
fine classical scholar and a writer of limited but dis- 
tinguished reputation. He had picked out Denys 
for notice in his first year, and Denys had hardly 
yet got over the ingenuous thrill which had come to 
him with the first indication of Mark Lefroy’s fa- 
vor. Mr. Lefroy had been known to undergradu- 
ates at Cambridge as the Marker — a sure indication 
that he was a man and a brother. 

Now he came in with his purblind, smiling air, 
and sat down, blinking from the sunlight outside, in 
the greenish twilight of the little parlor at Mur- 
rough Farm. He wore a shabby easy-fitting suit of 
tweeds, obviously cut by a good tailor, and there was 
a curious distinction in his air, despite his shabbiness. 

“This is delicious after your dusty roads, Denys,” 
he said; “I had no idea there was dust in the West 
of Ireland. I thought it always rained.” 

“It has been the finest May any man remembers,” 
said Denys, with simple pride, as though he had a 
hand in the fine weather. “But the dust comes here 
as soon as we get a fine day. You see the water runs 
153 


154 


“SUMMER— BUT 


away through the peat and what isn’t peat is lime- 
stone. You’ve had a long tramp, Lefroy.” 

“I’ve covered twenty miles since breakfast,” said 
the Marker, looking down at his dusty shoes, his 
hands clasped over the blackthorn he carried. “I 
had milk and griddlebread at twelve o’clock at a 
cabin on the last mountain I crossed. The woman 
apologized for the size of her little housheen, — I 
think that is what she called it — giving me a stool to 
sit on outside while I enjoyed her hospitality. ‘It 
rared eleven childher,’ she said with pride. ‘Twas 
a tight fit your honor, like washin’ potatoes in a 
pint pot, but I lost none o’ them. They’re all scat- 
tered on me in America except one or two that’s 
wakely.’ ” 

“Where did you come from last?” asked Denys. 

“I was staying with Aughrim.” He mentioned 
the magnate of local magnates. “The fishing wasn’t 
as good as I expected. How could it be with the sun 
blazing away like a furnace? Lady Aughrim was 
the fly in the ointment. She professed to be sympa- 
thetic and interested in all one’s interests. Yet she 
drove me out. Poor Aughrim ! No wonder he is 
old before his time ! I say, Denys, — this is deliciously 
peaceful. Could you put up with me for a week? I 
need as much rest as that, after Lady Aughrim, 
before I take the roads again.” 

“Put up with you 1” repeated Denys. “Make it a 
month, if you can put up with our simple ways. I 
can’t promise you much more than the warmest of 
welcomes.” 

His face beamed light upon Lefroy. For the 
moment he had forgotten even the humiliation in- 
flicted upon him by the Dowager Leenane. 

The distinguished visitor fell easily into the ways 
on the Murrough Farm. He was not above cooking 
a meal for himself when he wanted to go off at cock- 


WHERE'S THE ROSE f" 


155 

crow on some expedition or other. He was on the 
easiest terms with Maggie and the farm laborers. 
The discovery that his letters were addressed to the 
Hon. Mark Lefroy made the people more apprecia- 
tive of his friendliness. “Sure, he was a real humble 
gentleman!” said Maggie, and she was not alone in 
her judgment. 

Denys had been divided between distaste of ex- 
posing himself further to Lady Leenane’s process 
of putting him in his place and the dread of appear- 
ing sulky. Why had the terrible old lady come 
home to spoil the pleasant and peaceful atmosphere 
of Castle Clogher, where he was as one of the fam- 
ily? Dawn had been very kind. He had told his 
jealous heart that she was too kind. Nevertheless, 
the kindness was an exquisite thing in comparison 
with the constraint, the unhappiness of her manner 
when they met in the presence of the Dowager. 

Mark Lefroy’s visit settled the matter for Denys. 
Castle Clogher was well aware of the manner of man 
Mark Lefroy was. Even the Dowager, who had 
plenty of brains, condescended to be very civil to 
him. Having wondered audibly at finding a man 
of his quality at the Murrough Farm and talked 
about his great-aunt, Dorinda Frazer, who had been 
at school with her at Bath, she discovered a certain 
interest in Denys as the friend of Mark Lefroy. 
Her interest took the form of exhibiting Denys as 
an example of the throw-backs to be found among the 
Irish people. She recalled a picture she had seen 
somewhere of Sir James Fitzmaurice of the Des- 
monds, and discovered a certain resemblance in 
Denys’s dark fineness. In a loud, insensitive voice 
she told the story of how Leenane had bidden the 
boy he found sitting idling on a sunny bank go drain 
the bog, with no expectation of such a thing being 
possible. She added picturesque details from her 


“SUMMER— BUT 


156 

place at the end of the dinner-table as to Denys’s ap- 
pearance on the occasion. She was terribly plain- 
spoken, and she even referred to the supposititious 
absence of a portion of Denys’s clothing, with a 
strident laugh. 

“You wouldn’t believe it of him now,” she ended 
up, “when he looks like anybody else.” 

The red pulsed in Denys’s cheek like fire. He was 
aware that Dawn looked down at her plate, with a 
troubled unhappy air. Leenane grumbled under his 
breath. Oddly enough it was Mrs. Metcalfe who 
rushed into the gap in her placid way. 

“One who looks like Sir James Fitzmaurice of the 
Desmonds cannot possibly be described as looking 
like anyone, Mamma,” she said. “I am glad you 
found that likeness in Denys. We have often noticed 
it.” 

In the drawing-room the parish priest waited to 
play bridge with the Dowager. He and Leenane, 
Mark Lefroy and the Dowager, made up a table. 
Dawn had disappeared. Mrs. Metcalfe called 
Denys to her side and made him sit down by her. 
She was knitting as usual, the quickly flying needles 
making little points of light, with the jewels of the 
old-fashioned rings that showed on her little plump 
white hands, under the hanging sleeves of old Limer- 
ick lace. She was a most composing person. In the 
shadow cast by the lamp-shade she laid a little hand 
on Denys’s arm. 

“You are not to mind my mother,” she said in a 
whisper; “she is very old.” 

The Dowager was telling with great verve, at 
the top of her voice, the story of a compliment paid 
to her by a chance acquaintance in a railway carriage. 
He happened to be a sporting man, and her memory 
went back to Punchestown and Galway Races in the 


WHERE’S THE ROSE?” 


*57 


mists of antiquity. “I beg your pardon, Miss,” he 
said at last, “you must be as old as the Divil.’* 

It was not a silent bridge-party. Now and then 
the Dowager rapped an irascible question at her part- 
ner — Where had he learnt his bridge? Did he 
usually trump his partner? Had he ever heard of 
following his partner’s lead? and so on. The priest, 
who was her partner, took these questions with the 
greatest good humor, acknowledging in a way to 
disarm resentment that he was inexpert at the game 
and hoped that her Ladyship would teach him better. 

Mrs. Metcalfe’s voice at Denys’s ear was as sooth- 
ing as the running of a little cool stream under ferns 
and grasses in a parched land. 

Denys lost and caught up again the thread of 
what she was saying. It was a tale of the Dowager. 

“Mamma liked Mr. Dick O’Malley very much, 
but she used to say to him ‘I don’t mind meeting your 
sporting characters, but I draw the line at your 
actresses.’ Mrs. O’Malley had been an actress, but 
no one could have objected to her; she was a dear, 
kind, innocent creature, and Mamma was very fond 
of her. She used to say, ‘Belinda, my dear, I love 
you, but I don’t love some of your friends.’ She was 
so terribly plain-spoken the O’Malleys took care not 
to ask her to meet any of their actress friends; she 
quite enjoyed meeting actors as she always has loved 
clever people. But one day when they were enter- 
taining a ‘variety star,’ as they call it, a Miss Betty 
Grey, Mamma was announced. Dick O’Malley was 
always very quick. The newspapers had just re- 
ported that Queen Victoria had been presented with 
a very large Bible by a lady named Elizabeth Grey 
at some Scottish railway station where the royal 
train halted. The newspapers used to be very full 
of Queen Victoria’s activities. The O’Malleys had 


158 “SUMMER— BUT 

been laughing over the coincidence of names not long 
before. 

“ ‘My dear Lady Leenane,’ said he, — Mamma 
knew everyone else at the table, — ‘allow me to in- 
troduce Miss Elizabeth Grey. You remember the 
pleasing incident of her gracious Majesty receiving 
a Bible from Miss Elizabeth Grey? It was in all 
the papers.’ ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said poor 
Mamma. ‘It was a graceful thing to do if she didn’t 
mean to insinuate that her Majesty was in want of 
a copy. I’m very glad to meet you, my dear. I’ve 
got a Bible at home, thank you.’ ” 

“She was delighted with Miss Elizabeth Grey, 
who had an adorable innocence of aspect, which I 
believe was the cause of her furious success at the 
halls; it made such a piquant cohtrast to her songs. 
She came home and told Mary — my dear sister who 
died long ago — what a charming person she had met 
and how gauche and unready her daughters were by 
contrast. I don’t think, you know, that Mamma was 
very much affected by the Bible-giving. She rather 
apologized for it — so very Scotch, you know. 
Mamma is not narrow-minded, as you will discover 
presently.” 

She paused to pick up a dropped stitch and the 
Dowager was heard inveighing in unmistakable lan- 
guage against a novel which was having a great 
vogue at the moment. 

“I like my books clean or wholesomely dirty,” 
she said ; and Leenane remarked that his mother liked 
Tom Jones, as very few women did. “I’m not 
squeamish,” said the Dowager, “but these women 
who do and say such foul things turn me sea-sick.” 

Denys looked apprehensively about the room ; but 
there was no sign of Dawn. Mrs. Metcalfe went on 
as though the narrative had not broken off. 

“Of course Mr. O’Malley told Mamma after- 


WHERE'S THE ROSE?" 


159 


wards; he could not keep the joke to himself. 
Mamma remarked in her superb way: ‘Ah! you 
knew me better than to present her as an actress. I 
never believed in the Bible-giving,’ and carried off 
all the honors of war.” 

Dawn appeared no more, and at ten o’clock Denys 
stood up to go. He was to accompany his father to 
a fair in the morning, since the old man would not 
hear of his taking his place. It was a glorious night. 
Leenane offered to walk part of the way home with 
Denys. The priest and Mark Lefroy had gone on 
ahead. The last words that floated back to them 
showed that Lefroy was expounding his view of 
what he called the Myth of the Creation to a patient 
listener. 

“Father Shannon won’t get in a word beyond 
‘See that now!’ or ‘Sure I never thought of that!’ 
and he won’t want to,” said Denys. “Mark will have 
a glorious time; he loves a good listener, and Father 
Shannon will give him credit for good understanding 
and good will. 

Leenane apparently was not a good listener at 
the moment. He broke in with a somewhat moody 
voice : 

“My mother wants to take Dawn to the Tyrol. 
I’m not sure I shan’t let her go, though we will miss 
her, eh, Denys?” 

That “we” was balm to Denys’s aggrieved heart. 
Leenane, at all events, did not share his mother’s 
views about putting Denys in his place. 

“Don’t mind my mother,” said Leenane hastily. 
“She doesn’t mean it. She’s been treading on people’s 
corns since the day she was born. My poor father 
died at thirty,” he added half-humorously. “You’ve 
been keeping away. Don’t let an old lady’s 
brusquerie come between us.” 

“As though anything could but your own will,” 


160 “SUMMER— BUT 

Denys said hotly. “I owe you everything.” 

“You’ve more than repaid it. You’ve set me on 
my feet. I haven’t told my mother about the Rae- 
burns. I’d never hear the end of it. But the money’s 
there, lad. It will turn over and over in these 
schemes of ours. You shall have your share.” 

“I ask for nothing,” said Denys, “only to serve 
you as best I can.” 

“It was a good day for me, Denys,” said Leenane 
deliberately, “when I found you dreaming on the 
sunny side of the ditch. You’ve been like a son to 
me.” His voice broke slightly, as it always did 
when his loss came into his mind. 

Suddenly he stopped and laid a hand on Denys’s 
arm. They stood still in the moonlit road and the 
smell of sweet-briar and honeysuckle came to them 
through the smell of the sea-weed in the cove below 
the high winding road. 

“I’ll let Dawn go though we shall miss her,” he 
said. “My poor little girl. She’s hankering after 
that fellow. He doesn’t write. I can feel her dis- 
appointment in my bones and marrow when no let- 
ter comes. One has come to-night. I sent it up to 
her. I wish I could wring his neck.” 

Denys said nothing. What was there to say? Af- 
ter a second or two they turned and tramped along 
in silence. Denys remembered, as he went downhill, 
after Leenan,e had left him, that he had quite for- 
gotten to mention his legacy and the loan which was 
placed at his disposal for the purpose of reclaiming 
the bogs. 


WHERE'S THE ROSE f” 


CHAPTER XVIII 

DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 

awn was gone and the sun had dropped out of 
the sky for Denys, who felt while he went 
about his duties between Clogher and the Murrough 
Farm as though the glorious summer had become 
autumnal. Mrs. Metcalfe had gone with Dawn. 
There was no period fixed for their return. The 
Dowager talked of spending the winter in Rome. 
Leenane’s face was wintry as he told the news to 
Denys. 

“They’ll make a year of it, you’ll see,” he said. 
“A year without Dawn! I don’t know if I can stick 
it. I’ll be going out and joining them, I expect. My 
mother can be kind when she likes. She will be good 
to Dawn; and there is always Sophie.” 

Denys missed Mrs. Metcalfe too, the soft com- 
fortable optimistic woman, sitting so placidly with 
her eternal knitting in her lap. Castle Clogher seemed 
a lonely place for one man, and as the weeks w r ent 
Leenane seemed to miss his little girl more and more. 
The grey showed in his hair as it had not before, and 
a dust of greyness seemed to have fallen on his whole- 
some weather-beaten face and his blue eyes. 

“She had a letter from that fellow, Arundel — 
damn him !” he told Denys. “I told you it had come. 
It was to bid her good-bye. Some hugger-mugger 
about the conflict between duty and inclination. The 
poor child believed him. I had it from Sophie. The 
change will be the best thing in the world for her. 
We don’t mind being lonely, Denys, lad, do we, so 
161 


162 


DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 


long as it is good for Dawn? Just look at the dogs. 
They miss her as we do.” 

The circle of imploring eyes looked up at this 
reference to them and the dogs wagged their tails. 

“I never knew such a child for dogs,” Leenane 
went on. “She never knew what fear was. I re- 
member when she was a small child and we were in 
France. I was on my beam-ends and we put up at 
a place kept by an Englishman, a shocking bad hut. 
They had a big poodle chained under the steps, poor 
beast ! He was supposed to be savage. He ought 
to have been. The fellow should have been shot 
who kept him there. Dawn was no more than two 
years old. She had an uncommonly soft little heart 
and she burst into tears the first time she saw the 
dog. One day she was missing, she and a goose that 
was for dinner. There was time for all to be ter- 
rified — such a place, slimy rocks and sheer cliff — 
before we found her. She was in the kennel with the 
dog. He was still licking his chops and she was 
sitting in the dirty straw stroking his cheeks. 

“ ‘Don’t cry any more, poor doggie,’ she said, 
‘you’ve had a most d’licious duck for your dinner.’ 
The bad hat was for flogging the dog. I stopped that 
and called in the law; there was a sympathetic gen- 
darme who detested the bad hat. He was warned 
and we got a little branch of the Society for the Pre- 
vention of Cruelty to Animals, which had been 
started in the place by some islanders, to watch him. 
The poor beast was found dead in his cold kennel 
under the steps soon afterwards. I’d have shot him 
myself if he hadn’t died. I wasn’t going to leave 
him there.” 

It was a great summer. The West had never 
known such a summer. Pat Fitzmaurice looked 
from the little hill over Murrough Farm to the bogs 
shimmering in the great heat and wondered. 

“The world’s changin’,” he said. “I remember 


DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 


163 

the wet years. There was one that broke at the end 
of May and the rain never stopped till the end of 
the following year. The crops were all lost on us, 
and the cattle died of the murrain. There was talk 
of famine — but God was good to us; we had two or 
three years followin’ that were dry and fine. If it 
goes on like this the bogs will be dryin’ out of them- 
selves.” 

That summer Denys began the work of reclama- 
tion. He had resisted the inclination to spend all his 
legacy on Murrough. He had bought out the old 
Tower and the waste land surrounding it, for a song. 
The old Castle had three rooms one above another; 
by the side of it, a building of two stories, of much 
later date, half-ruined and thickly covered with 
ivy. Windows and glass and roof were broken, but 
those who had built it had built it strongly and the 
Walls were intact. It might easily be made into a 
dwelling-house of a moderate comfortableness. 
Denys roofed it and let it be till he had time to at- 
tend to it further. 

Neither Leenane nor his father thought it strange 
that he should spend good money on an old ruin, 
given over to the jackdaws and sparrows; and Denys 
felt himself a better man now that he was possessor 
of Murrough, that he could legitimately call himself 
Denys Fitzmaurice of Murrough. He imagined 
what would be in the future. A few gnarled fruit- 
trees stood about the old ruin and there were green 
traces of what had been once garden pathways. The 
garden was going to come back, the house to be 
added to, and made habitable in the good days that 
were coming. 

He had beaten up laborers near and far for the 
reclamation of the bog. It was not so simple a mat- 
ter as the Little Bog; there had to be machinery for 
pumping out the water which cost an extravagant 
sum, and the progress was inch by inch, Denys put 


1 64 DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 

his back into it, working with the men, often while 
the water rose half-way to his knees. And the old 
men came and looked on at the work curiously, say- 
ing that Denys was going to rob the poor of their 
little fires, and that it was no use going against Na- 
ture; the rain would come and the bogs would fill 
in again. Sure, God meant that there should be bogs. 

The rain came and the work was suspended, 
and Leenane began to long like the swallows 
for the south. Good reports came from the travel- 
lers. They were moving southward quietly, expect- 
ing to be in Rome in October. Dawn had written 
that she was keen about Rome, but wanted more than 
anything else to see her father, and to hear all about 
home and the dogs and Denys’s reclamation of the 
bogs. She asked to be remembered to Denys. 

Leenane read the letter aloud with satisfaction. 

“She’s her own woman again,” he said, gleefully. 
“I’ll go out and bring her back, Denys, as soon as 
ever the spring’s in sight. Let her have her fling. 
You can’t do Rome in a day nor a month nor a year. 
By Jove, I’ll see it again through her eyes. There’s 
nothing like seeing the world through your children’s 
eyes.” 

A day or two later he was dissatisfied with a new 
photograph of Dawn sent home by Mrs. Metcalfe. 
She was too big-eyed. Perhaps it was only a trick of 
the photographer. Did Denys think she looked 
thin? They were not taking enough care of her. 

The photograph sent him off at last happily on 
his road to Dawn. He remarked casually that his 
mother might be a terror in other ways but she was 
perfect as a traveller. She knew the map of Europe 
by heart and the best people in all the capitals and 
the right places to stay in; and she never grumbled 
at discomforts, small or great. 

“Dawn will get the best out of it with the Dow- 


DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 


165 


ager,” he said. “Why, when I’ve travelled with her 
and that grenadier, priceless jewel of a maid, Sarah, 
I’ve been a little boy. They looked after me, by 
Jove, every step of the way.” 

He was gone and Denys went with him as far as 
London. He had had a letter from Mrs. Aarons. 
She would like to see him about the loan her hus- 
band had been willing to give for the purpose of re- 
claiming the land; she wanted to know how Denys’s 
work had been going on. 

In the Strand, Denys ran up against Mark Lefroy. 

“The very man I wanted to see most,” he said, 
flushing with pleasure. “I was going to wire to you 
and ask if you could come to town; if you could not, 
I should have gone to you.” 

“Denys, you are immortally young,” Lefroy said. 
Denys was looking at him with eyes of affection. “Of 
course I’d have come any distance to see you. Can 
you lunch? We’ll go to the Savoy.” 

Yes, Denys could lunch. He had made an ap- 
pointment with Mrs. Aarons for the afternoon. He 
did not intend to stay in London longer than he could 
help. He had to look up some machinery, to see 
one or two men, experts, interested in the work he 
was trying to do. He must be back in four days’ 
time, else his father would be alone for Christmas, a 
happening he did not contemplate. 

They had a delicate lunch at a little table in the 
great dining-room of the Savoy , — hors d’ oeuvres, a 
bit of fish, a dainty dish of chicken with mushrooms 
and olives, an omelette to follow and a scrap of 
cheese. 

“Now I come to think of it,” said Denys, “I be- 
lieve I’ve been eating boiled bacon every day for 
the last six months.” 

They talked of many things. Lefroy was nebu- 
lous about his plans for Christmas, had not made up 


1 66 


DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 


his mind which of his invitations to accept, — he had 
an embarrassment of choice; finally, since Denys 
would not leave his father alone for Christmas, he 
decided to chuck the country-houses and cross to Ire- 
land with Denys. There was plenty of rough shoot- 
ing on Denys’s newly-acquired estate, which com- 
prised a mountain and a stretch of lake. Lefroy 
thought that of all things he should like to own a 
mountain. “It would be putting them in their places 
for a while at least and from our point of view,” he 
said. “They always look so confoundedly like own- 
ing us and not being aware of the miserable posses- 
sion.” 

Denys was enchanted. They made all their ar- 
rangements for meeting a few days later. There 
would be four weeks of good talk and comradeship 
— in the slack time of the winter, too. Lefroy asked 
for all his simple friends by their names: Peter 
Walshe, Christy Nally, Michael Killeen, old Mrs. 
Egan, Kate O’Brien. He had sat by many a cabin- 
fire and thoroughly enjoyed himself. 

Suddenly he asked what tricky chance had brought 
Denys to London just in time to meet him as he 
walked in the Strand, undecided as to his Christmas 
plans. 

Denys told him that he had come to see Mrs. 
Aarons. 

“Ah, yes,” he said. “A queer story that. Simon 
must have anticipated it when he made that curious 
wilL” a 

“I did not hear of the will,” said Denys. 

He had not heard beyond that part which con- 
cerned himself. He had thrown himself into hard 
work these many months back. Leenane had not 
heard or had not told Denys. “We are all provin- 
cials in the West of Ireland,” said Denys; “we are 
self-contained. We don’t trouble about what is 


DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 167 

happening in the capitals of Europe beyond Dublin, 
nor much about that. We have our own towns.” 

“It is a queer story. Simon Aarons, while treat- 
ing his wife very handsomely during her lifetime, 
and giving her a free hand as to the charities they 
were both interested in, left her not very much to 
dispose of. Everything goes to the charities after 
her death unless — this is the odd thing — she re- 
marries. In that case she is at liberty to make what 
provision she will for her husband. Queer fish, 
Aarons ! He adored her. Most men in his circum- 
stances would have tied her up from marrying.” 

“She would never marry,” said Denys, with con- 
fidence. 

“There are rumors that she is going to marry 
again, and very foolishly. The wisest woman cannot 
be trusted not to commit a folly when she is in love. 
The same remark applies, with even greater force, 
to the male sex.” 

Denys turned very red and Lefroy wondered what 
he was blushing about. He had often been amused 
at Denys’s ingenuousness, which made him blush 
easily. 

“She is going to marry — whom?” he asked. 

“I don’t see why you should be so excited about it. 
You’d no pretensions yourself? Perhaps it is not 
true. They say she is going to marry some chap in 
the Coldstream who has run through what money 
he possessed.” 

“Captain Arundel?” 

“Yes, I think that is the name. Might be her 
son, they say. Queer things people do !” 

Lefroy left immediately after lunch. It was as 
well, for the interest had suddenly gone out of 
Denys’s talk. An acute observer, he wondered how 
Mrs. Aaron’s re-marriage could possibly have af- 
fected Denys. He knew that Denys was in love 


1 68 


DENYS HEARS THE NEWS 


with Dawn Finucane. It was a bit of a bewilder- 
ment to him, but it would have been against all his 
canons to pry into the secrets of even his dearest 
friends, so, with a mental shrug of his shoulders, he 
dismissed Denys’s odd behavior from his mind. If 
the boy had chosen to tell him, well and good. Other- 
wise, it did not concern him. 

Denys went off to see one of his experts and dis- 
cussed hydraulics and river drainage for a round 
hour, after which he thought he might appear at 
Stratfield Place. 

Although he had talked to the expert with eager 
enthusiasm and listened to him intently, the thing he 
had heard from Mark Lefroy had lain in the back 
of his mind all the time. He had an intense desire 
to know if it was true, and a burning indignation 
against Hilary Arundel, supposing it was true. He 
remembered the evening he had seen Arundel and 
Margery Barton driving together down Oxford 
Street, absorbed in each other, flushed and laughing, 
while Simon Aarons lay dying and his widow to be 
was alone with her grief. He swore softly between 
his teeth when he remembered it, at Hilary Arundel, 
not at the poor impassioned girl. What did they 
see in him — Margery Barton and Dawn, — in the 
cold, neat face with the blue eyes and golden hair 
and moustache. Cold? Yes, the face was cold, but 
there had been passion in it that evening. Then he 
remembered the letters Mrs. Aarons had shown him, 
which had revealed Hilary Arundel in a new light. 
He remembered also the sister, so unlike him, and 
her devoted affection for him. Perhaps the tale was 
not true, after all. 

Another man might have remembered that if the 
tale were true a dangerous rival was out of his path. 
Not Denys. If it were true he could only feel a 
burning indignation and scorn for the man who had 


DENYS HEARS THE NEJVS 169 

had three women’s hearts given to him and had been 
false to all, falsest to the woman, essentially noble, 
whom he was going to marry for her money. 


CHAPTER XIX 

THE WAY OF A WOMAN 

HE familiar scent of flowers which he associated 



with his first visit to Stratfield Place, came to 
his nostrils as he entered he hall. There were sheafs 
of mimosa in blue jars on the onyx tables. In the 
drawing-room, as he was ushered in, the more deli- 
cate northern scent of violet and lilys-of-the-valley 
reached him gently. He remembered. There had 
been growing flowers everywhere. He could not 
imagine Mrs. Aarons without flowers and music. 

She came round the corner of a big screen of 
Chinese lacquer to receive him. On the other side 
of it was a glowing fire and a couple of luxurious 
chairs facing each other. It was a cold, wet winter 
day, and already the murky afternoon had become 
dusk. The Blindman’s Holiday, in the sweet-scented 
firelit room, was very agreeable. 

She took his hand between both of hers with her 
exquisite kindness. She was in black, a soft, dull, 
silken blackness that became her noble figure and 
stately head. His first impression was that she looked 
pale. There was something mournful about her. Of 
course it was the delusive light and shadow and the 
black gown. Her eyes looked cavernous in the pal- 
lor of her face. He thought of a priestess. His 
next thought was that she did not look like a woman 
about to marry a young man with whom she was 
infatuated. Her old air of grave composure was 
there. He said to himself that Rumor had wronged 
her. 

“It is very good of you to come,” she said. “You 
should have come to lunch.” Then she added in a 


THE WAY OF A WOMAN 


171 

lower voice: “He would have been very glad to see 
you. He has taken the most extraordinary liking 
to you.” 

“He was very good to me,” said Denys, simply; 
and the last shadow 1 of belief in what he called 
“those infamous stories” fled away. 

She rang the bell for tea and they settled down 
for a comfortable talk in the firelit warmth. Denys 
had not yet rendered an account of his stewardship, 
as he called it. He told her of his purchase of Mur- 
rough. 

“I do not know if he would have approved,” he 
said, doubtfully. “He might have thought it un- 
practical.” 

“Not one of our nation,” she answered, “although 
we are scattered over the face of the earth. He 
would understand. Don’t you remember: ‘By the 
waters of Babylon they sat down and wept because 
they remembered Zion.’ ” 

“With the money I had over after the purchase of 
Murrough, its lake, bogs and mountain — I had three 
thousand pounds left when once more a Fitzmaurice 
owned Murrough — I have bought a long strip of 
land on the shores of Erris Bay.” 

“Why?” she asked, with quick, intelligent interest. 

“Because the fleet could ride at anchor in the Bay; 
because it is the nearest land to America ; because it 
is going to be the port for America in the future. It 
cannot be long delayed. I can see and I am half 
sorry to see it, a new Belfast, only greater and clean- 
er than Belfast, there where there are now only the 
gulls and the bitterns. We must see that it is better 
than Belfast. No factories as I have seen them; no 
sweated labor; no slums.” 

“Ah,” she said, with satisfaction. “Simon said he 
recognized in you the practical visionary. He thought 
little of the man who had not vision, however prac- 


172 THE WAY OF A WOMAN 

tical he might be. Is there more land to be had?” 

“Miles of it — for a song.” 

“I shall make you my man of business. I have 
power to make investments.” Something of a 
shadow passed across her face, he thought, but could 
not be sure, because of the delusive light. “You can 
have ten thousand pounds more if you will, to invest 
for me. I believe in the future of your country.” 

“The money will be well invested, I am certain,” 
Denys said eagerly. 

“Mr. Sutton — of Sutton, Harding and Sutton — 
my husband’s solicitors — would say I was mad; I 
believe in your practical visions ; I believe also in my 
own luck. Even the Bank has come to believe in that. 
I have made investments against everybody’s advice 
and they have been successful. All I touch turns to 
gold.” 

A weary shadow fell over her face as she said it, 
and Denys, becoming accustomed to the half-light, 
said to himself that she looked ill. Something had 
been making ravages in her noble beauty. Her 
cheeks were hollow, her eyes large in her face. It 
did not occur to him that she had chosen the half- 
light so that he should not see, out of some strange 
pity for herself, but it was so. 

“What have you been doing to yourself?” he 
asked, with a sudden sharp tenderness. “You are 
not looking well.” 

“Ah, you see,” she said. “Everyone does not see. 
I am a sick woman, Denys.” 

He was startled at the mournfulness of her tone. 

“You have not heard everything,” she said. 
“People will gossip.” 

“I have heard nothing,” he said, not thinking of 
the gossip about Hilary Arundel, but only of her 
health. 


THE WAY OF A WOMAN 


x 73 

“You do not know that Captain Arundel and I 
were married a week ago?’ 

He uttered an exclamation of surprise. 

“Listen to me,” she said, and laid a hand on his 
arm. “Do not think hard and cruel things of me 
till you have heard all. I have always loved Hilary 
Arundel, — ever since my husband brought him to 
me for me to decide if he was to help him or not, — 
like a son of my own. He is devoted to me, really 
and truly. I believe his devotion is the best thing 
in him or one of the best. Do you think a sickly, 
middle-aged woman like me would tie a golden boy 
to my sick-room? You know the terms of my hus- 
band’s will? I might have saved enough to leave 
Hilary a comfortable sum out of my income. On 
the other hand I might not have time. Simon wished 
me to live with dignity. To marry him was the 
only way. It is just — a formal tie. When I am 
gone he can marry the girl who is his fitting mate.” 

It sounded almost incredible to Denys’s ears. 

“He agreed?” he said, dumbfounded. He was 
remembering the girl like a rose who had sat pressed 
close to Hilary Arundel’s side in the hansom, that 
golden evening of last May. Poor Dawn! Appar- 
ently Dawn had never been in it at all. 

“He took some persuasion. I have great influence 
over him, more than anyone else in the world, I be- 
lieve.” 

She said it with an air of mournful pride. 

“You should be loved for yourself,” said Denys, 
impulsively. “It ought not to be part of a bargain.” 

She flushed like a girl and he saw she was gratified, 
but she said quietly that she was satisfied with her 
husband’s love, by which he took it that she meant 
the love of Simon Aarons. 

“I knew this thing was coming even in my hus- 
band’s lifetime,” she said, and laid a hand on her 


174 


THE WAY OF A WOMAN 


breast, with a tragic gesture. “I kept it from Simon; 
he could not have endured it. If there had been any 
other way I would not have tied Hilary, even nomi- 
nally, to a sick woman. It is hard on the boy. But 
there was no other way.” 

“He will make it easier for you,” said Denys; “he 
will comfort you like a son.” 

“He is very good to me,” she answered. “I 
insist upon its making as little difference as possible 
in his way of living. I want people to understand 
just how it was ; that if there had been any other way 
I should have taken it. He is at Windsor with his 
regiment. When he comes to town he is very kind 
and comes to see me. I insisted that it should be so. 
The whole world will know that I did not forget 
Simon Aarons, that I, a suffering and sorrowful 
woman, did not do such an ignoble thing as to marry 
a young husband. 

“Yes,” said Denys, in a slow, considering way. He 
was wondering what the world would think of Hilary 
Arundel’s share in the transaction, but he said noth- 
ing, lest it should pain her. 

“You need never doubt his goodness to me,” she 
said, as though she suspected some doubt. “He 
wanted to be with me, to help me to bear the suffer- 
ing that must come to me. He even wanted to re- 
sign his commission and take me away somewhere, 
though he loves his profession and the regiment. 
Poor boy, as though taking me away would make 
any difference! When I come to die, — ” she lifted 
her head proudly, “I shall die alone. I have made him 
promise, solemnly. I shall go away somewhere. I 
hope it will not be very long. I could not bear to 
be perhaps — dreadful — to him.” 

A queer thought came to Denys. Was it so that 
a mother loved a son? He put the thought away as 
though he had no right to dwell upon it. 


THE WAY OF A WOMAN 


175 


A footman came in, fetched a tea-table and set it 
by Mrs. Aaron’s — no, Mrs. Arundel’s — chair. He 
brought a cloth and the tea-tray, then the teapot, 
and a pyramid of small silver dishes, doing it all 
with a slow soft-footed efficiency. Lastly he brought 
the silver kettle, under which he lit a spirit lamp. 
They talked of ordinary things while he was in the 
room. 

“You must make a good tea, Denys,” she said 
when he had gone, uncovering one after another of 
the little dishes. “Here are all the things that 
Hilary likes best — buttered toast, pate de foie gras 
sandwiches, chicken and water-cress sandwiches, 
Sally Lunn, several different kinds of cake. A boy 
should make a good tea. Sugar and cream?” 

She smiled at him across the tea-tray. The foot- 
man came in with a lamp which he placed a little 
behind her. Denys had a passing wonder as to 
whether he had been instructed to place it there. 

“Captain Arundel has rung up to say he is coming 
round to tea, ma’am,” the man said as he set down 
the lamp. 

“Oh, thank you, James. Bring fresh tea as soon 
as Captain Arundel arrives and ask Cook to send up 
some hot cakes with it.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

The man left the room. Her face came round 
suddenly into the light of the lamp. It was flushed 
and smiling. The impression of pain and weariness 
passed away from Denys’s mind. It must have been 
the flickering lights and shadows. What did she 
mean by talking of death and disease? 

“I am glad you will see Hilary,” she said. “I 
don’t think you and he liked each other much, Denys. 
You must put that to one side. Only remember how 
good and dear he is to me. I should like to have 
friends to stand by Hilary when I am gone.” 


THE WAY OF A WOMAN 


176 

He knew what she meant. A good many people 
might look askance at Hilary Arundel for the bar- 
gain he had made, when he was free to take Simon 
Aarons’s money and marry a young girl. He re- 
plied a little stiffly that he was too unimportant to 
count as Captain Arundel’s friend. He would have 
plenty of friends of his own world to stand by him 
if he needed advocacy. Then he had a sudden revel- 
ation. All she had told him was meant so that he 
should know the whole story of the marriage, so as 
to be able to influence public opinion if necessary. 
He began to wonder whether she had not taken 
many people into her confidence as she had taken 
him. 

A little later Hilary Arundel came in, wrapped in 
a luxurious, fur-lined coat, above which his face 
showed pinched and blue. His eyes watered with 
the cold. 

“It is bitter weather outside,” he said. He and 
Denys had nodded coldly to each other. “It is de- 
licious in here. No one keeps such fires as you, 
Rachel.” 

She beamed at his commendation. It seemed to 
Denys almost a profanation that Arundel should 
call her Rachel. He could not get used to the idea 
of these two being husband and wife in law. He 
stood up to go. She pressed him to stay. Hilary 
Arundel said nothing, but having taken his coat and 
hat away sat down and began to do justice to the 
good tea. 

She looked wistfully from one young face to the 
other. 

“How are the Leenanes?” Arundel asked pres- 
ently, thawing under the combined influence of the 
fire and the good tea. “Still in Rome, hey?” 

Denys answered coldly that they were still in. 
Rome. 


THE WAY OF A WOMAN 


177 

“And Dawn — Miss Finucane. Dawn is quite well, 
I hope?” 

He said it with an air of bravado. And Denys 
answered that so far as he knew Miss Finucane was 
quite well. 

After all there was nothing to complain of in 
Hilary Arundel’s manner to his wife. There was 
something different from his usual foppish self-satis- 
faction when he addressed her. Nothing of the 
coldness and the mockery he had for other people. 
There was something reverent in his air towards her. 

“After all,” said Denys to himself, as he walked 
down Oxford Street in the teeth of the east wind, 
having left the strange pair to each other’s society, 
“she is a woman in a million.” 


CHAPTER XX 

THE ANCIENT ENEMY 

D ENYS returned home with full powers to buy up 
as much land as he could buy on the shores of 
Erris Bay for Mrs. Arundel. He had an idea that 
she meant to leave it to Hilary Arundel. If she died 
and things panned out according to Denys’s vision 
he or those who came after him would be fabulously 
rich one day. 

The man who owned that slice of desolate country 
was a rich man. That was good; so sure was Denys 
of his vision that he could not have borne to take 
advantage of a poor man. Lord Tyrawley and 
Erris was sick of his tenants in Erris village and 
along the shores of the Bay. He complained that 
they were getting insolent with the times. Already 
a bailiff of his had been threatened. 

“I hardly knew that there were any cottages,” 
said Denys, “they are indistinguishable from the 
boulders.” 

“They are there all the same,” said Lord Tyraw- 
ley — “a lazy thriftless lot, always making a poor 
mouth when they’re asked for their rent. You should 
get them out — if we agree. One of them winged my 
grandfather in the old days, — about ’80. Neither 
my father nor I have had personal communication 
with them since then. We deal with them through 
our agent, Mr. Beresford Bright of Seaford Park. 
If they don’t pay they go.” 

A speech of Lord Leenane’s recurred to Denys’s 
mind. 

“The Irish landlords were ruined by their own 
agents and their own bailiffs.” 

178 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 


179 


“I don’t know what the world is coming to,” went 
on Lord Tyrawley. “I’ve some land in the Mid- 
lands, fat land. I don’t get enough rent for it. They 
say they made the richness of the land themselves. 
Their wives and daughters dress like ladies; the days 
of neat and fitting attire are gone by for them. I 
should revive the old laws again of plain dressing for 
women of this class.” 

“Ah,” said Denys, quoting Lord Leenane, who 
liked to poke fun at his unprogressive brethren. 
“They put your rents in their garments.” 

“Exactly,” said Lord Tyrawley, not suspecting a 
joke. “It is enough to make my grandfather turn 
in his grave. He had power of life and death over 
the tenants on the estate. Of course you would not 
understand the point of view, Mr. Fitzmaurice. You 
are, I suppose, in the position of a tenant. Wonder- 
ful what the farmers can do now. They send their 
sons to college. If they are able to do that they 
should not grumble at an increased rent. I remem- 
ber your father, a very estimable man. I lost my 
way one foggy day after the Blazers, — you were at 
school, I think, and your father took me in, fed me, 
and gave me a bed. It was very kind of him.” 

“The Fitzmaurices were always hospitable,” said 
Denys, drily, “so the teeth of their children are set 
on edge.” 

“Ah, you know your Bible! Very glad of that. 
Well, I shall have the deeds drawn up, Mr. Fitz- 
maurice. Of course you are properly accredited in 
acting for Mrs. Arundel?” 

“You may be quite satisfied of that.” 

“Ah, to be sure. I heard you were acting as Lee- 
nane’s agent. A queer idea. Not that Leenane has 
much work for an agent.” 

“If he had I should be unable to do it,” said 
Denys, “having a good deal of work of my own.” 


1 80 THE ANCIENT ENEMY 

The light-eyed, light-haired, rather vacuous-look- 
ing young man stared at him. 

“Ah — um — of course. I heard Leenane was try- 
ing to drain the bogs. Ridiculous ! If it were pos- 
sible it would have been done long since. I hope 
Mrs. Arundel will import some Jews into Erris to 
teach the people thrift. Good-bye, Mr. Fitzmau- 
rice, good-bye; you shall hear from my solicitors in 
a few days.” 

He did not go through the formula of offering 
Denys his hand. What matter? Denys remem- 
bered that Lord Tyrawley was only fourth of his 
line, that his ennobled ancester had been lampooned 
in caustic verses by Curran, had wriggled his way 
into Parliament and bought his peerage by voting 
for the Union. Denys, being Irish, it took the sting 
out of Lord Tyrawley’s rudeness to remember these 
things and he savored them as a sweet mouthful. 

The negotiations were not altogether concluded 
when Denys received, to his exceeding surprise, a 
visit from Hilary Arundel. The smallish, elegant 
figure leaped from the side of a station car to meet 
Denys coming the other way. It was a chilly gray 
day of March, when the wild geese had gone north- 
ward crying high in the sky, and there was a commo- 
tion in every group of trees; then the starlings chat- 
tered like falling water and the low hedgerows 
seemed to quiver with the motion and the talk of 
small birds. 

He held out a hand to Denys, who took it, after 
a momentary hesitation. Hilary Arundel noticed 
the hesitation and flushed. 

“I came over to see what you were doing,” he 
stammered, lamely. “It’s a queer, wild country this. 
What skies! Do you often get that indigo-blue in 
sky and water?” 

Denys glanced at the sky reflected in the bog- 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 1 8 1 

pools. He had not noticed that it was indigo-blue, 
and he would not have discovered that epithet for 
it. Had Hilary Arundel come from London to talk 
about the Irish skies? 

“I have a friend, a painter, who raves about the 
skies here,” Denys said. “He called that blue 
Reckett’s blue. He used to rave about that and the 
pink of the river-sands at evening.” 

He felt what he was saying to be futile. What 
had Hilary Arundel come for? He glanced at the 
neat small profile and saw that it was pinched with 
cold. They walked along side by side taking the 
same direction the car was going. 

“Lord Tyrawley asked to see someone direct from 
Mrs. Aarons,” Arundel said. “He thought that you 
had not a proper grasp of business.” 

He laughed as he said it, and the chilliness of his 
face changed to something pleasanter. 

“You’ve been treading on his lordship’s corns,” 
he said, “you know he is called Lord Tomnoddy and 
Worse at the clubs.” 

“He trod on mine,” said Denys, “but he was too 
light a weight to hurt.” 

“You came to see me before you saw Lord Tom- 
noddy and Worse,” he went on. 

“Without the remotest intention of taking the 
matter out of your hands,” said Arundel. “I have 
a letter from Mrs. Aarons to the effect that she 
wishes you to handle the business. Of course the 
lawyers will come in for the title-deeds and all that. 
You are her accredited agent.” 

“She could have written it,” said Denys, uncom- 
promisingly. “I don’t see where you come in.” 

“Nor I,” returned Arundel and laughed. He 
looked very cold. His lips were blue and his eyes 
watered. His teeth chattered; he kept them quiet 
with an effort. 


182 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 


“How far have you come to-day?” Denys asked. 

“From Sligo. I’ve driven on the side of this thing 
for twenty-five miles. I’m bumped to bits with your 
infernal roads and frozen to the marrow with your 
cold, piercing damp. Are you taking me to a fire?” 

“Send the car away,” said Denys, on an impulse 
he could not have explained. He detested Hilary 
Arundel, but there are circumstances in which a man 
must treat his enemy as though he loved him. “Let 
him leave your portmanteau at the Murrough Farm. 
You can have a bed and the best our house affords; 
it is not much compared with . . 

Arundel winced. 

“Don’t say ‘the luxury I am accustomed to’,” said 
he, in a tone which was almost imploring. 

Arundel had played fast and loose with Dawn — 
he had dared to do it; he had played fast and loose 
with Margery Barton; he had made a marriage 
which should have put him beyond the pale, yet — 
strangely enough, Denys did not detest him as much 
as he had thought. 

“I won’t say it,” he replied, with the beginning of 
a smile, “but it is a poor little place. I have just 
acquired the home of my ancestors, Murrough, 
but at present that would be even less comfort- 
able.” 

For the life of him he could not have refrained 
from bringing in Murrough, even at the risk of 
exciting Hilary Arundel’s mockery. 

“You really mean it?” Hilary Arundel said eager- 
ly. “I may send the car away, as he has dropped my 
bag. I confess I do not see myself driving back 
those twenty-five miles. We’ve had one drenching. 
The driver had provided me with a sort of gridiron 
to sit upon so that I shouldn’t sit in the wet. I’m 
not sure that it fulfilled its purpose.” 

“Better stay and see Lord Tyrawley at your 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 1 83 

leisure. It is ten miles to Cloon-Erris. You won’t 
want to see him to-day?” 

“If I can get under a roof I shan’t want to turn 
out for some time.” 

They sent the car on with the portmanteau and 
walked along the road to the Murrough Farm. This 
was not the scene of the big reclamation but, as they 
walked, Denys pointed out to his companion the 
bit of the Little Bog which had been reclaimed, on 
which now cows were quietly grazing. 

“It is the best bit of land we have and the freest 
from moss,” he went on. “If we can reclaim on a 
big scale it will mean immense wealth, now going to 
waste in the bogs.” 

“You are not afraid of the unseen powers?” said 
Hilary Arundel with an unsuspected imaginative- 
ness. “What are those things sticking up there like 
gnarled old fingers? The spectral trees of the bog 
overwhelmed many centuries ago. They might be 
held up in warning.” 

“They might be striving to throw off the bog 
that stifled them,” Denys said, answering in the 
same vein. “That is soft bog. There was a poor 
man here, Denis Mannion by name. He had a little 
boy and girl he loved, and, as their mother was dead 
he had to leave them at home — in that rotting and 
roofless cabin over there — while he went to his 
work. He used to tell the girl to look after the 
boy — she was a bit older, but only seven years old. 
For a time it worked well. She was a careful wise 
little body. Then one evening as he came from 
work he saw a little hand sticking out above the 
bog, just as those old trees are doing. He got a 
long ladder — lucky it was handy — for he’d been 
thatching, — and he crawled out on it and somehow 
he got the little one out of the bog, but she was 
dead. The little boy’s body was never recovered.” 


184 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 


“What a tragic story!” said Hilary Arundel, 
and shivered. 

“Yes, — isn’t it? It gives one a sense of the cruelty 
of the bogs, even if they keep the fires of the people 
alight. I had a friend staying with me here, Mark 
Lefroy. He loved the ways of the people and was 
always talking with them and finding out things. 
He asked Margaret Walshe one day how long her 
turf fire would keep alight. ‘It was lit,’ said she, 
‘the day my man brought me home a bride, and it 
has never gone out since.’ They call the turf the 
seed of fire. There’ll be enough of it for the fires 
when we have turned all these wet places into rich 
land. The bog won’t drown many more children.” 

“There’ll be a deal of beauty lost,” said Arundel, 
gazing out over the rich purples and russets and 
greens of the bog. 

They sat down by the fire in the little sitting- 
room at the Murrough Farm while Maggie pre- 
pared a meal. Hilary Arundel looked very tired 
and rather fragile as he lay back in the easy chair, 
a whiskey-and-soda at his elbow, gazing about him 
at the pleasant room. 

“That is, — ?” he asked, indicating the portrait 
of a young girl, oval-faced, with velvety eyes and 
the softly opening lips of a child or a flower. 

“My mother. She had French blood. That is 
why her eyes are so dark.” 

“And those?” 

He pointed to the portraits of an elderly man, 
very hale and hearty, in a bottle-green coat, a red 
waistcoat and very fine laced ruffles to his shirt, and 
a lady, a few years younger, wearing a huge cap 
and a lace shawl draped about her black silk shoul- 
ders. 

“My grandfather and grandmother — on my 
father’s side.” 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 


185 


“I call it an uncommonly pleasant room,” said 
Arundel, letting Rory’s ears drop through his fingers, 
as Denys had been doing that day long ago. 

“A bachelor room,” said Denys with a sense of 
gratification. “Maggie lets us do what we will; 
and you’ve always got to turn a dog out of a chair 
before you can sit down.” 

Patrick Fitzmaurice came in — they had heard him 
kicking off his mired boots in the passage. He had 
been choosing cattle for the fair, and he had had a 
long tramp through the boggy and rushy fields. He 
received Hilary Arundel with old-fashioned good 
manners, and soon after he had sat down in a chair 
before the fire, fell fast asleep. 

“He is wearied out,” said Denys. “He simply 
won’t delegate things to me. He is convinced of my 
incompetence.” 

Maggie brought in the food — a boiled chicken 
and bacon; a cauliflower and splendid potatoes. 
There were flowers on the table and they ate from 
good plates with old willow pattern and lines of 
gold in the blue, and the knobs and handles of the 
dishes richly gilt. The silver was heavy and good, 
the cloth old damask and the table napkins prettily 
folded. Maggie had been between-maid and then 
kitchen-maid at Castle Clogher, and, as she would 
have said herself, she knew what Quality liked. 

Despite Hilary Arundel’s fatigue, Denys and he 
sat up late into the night. They talked until the 
turf fell to white ash, finding much to say to each 
other. Denys felt a sense of amazement at this 
sudden burying of the hatchet. What was he about 
to forgive so easily — not only his own score, for he 
remembered Arundel’s cool bright insolence — but 
the far more serious things he had against him? As 
they talked he felt that there had to be a readjust- 
ment of his opinions. Puppyish, foppish, thin-blood- 


1 86 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 


ed, insolent; the adjectives he had thought fitting 
for Hilary Arundel, were not fitting, after all. In- 
deed, they seemed suddenly unconsidered, inappro- 
priate. 

“Upon my word, Fitzmaurice, you’re a lucky 
man!” said Arundel, contemplating his own small 
feet, in purple leather slippers, thrust out to the 
warmth of the fire. There was a pucker in his 
brow and his eyes looked moody and discontented. 

“Yes?” asked Denys, with a lift of his eyebrows. 

“You think me no end of a poor creature. I am. 
But perhaps not altogether as poor as you think me. 
I have a queer desire for your esteem.” 

“Oh! why should you have?” asked Denys, 
awkwardly. 

“You might perhaps let Dawn — Miss Finucane 
know, — sometime — what I am going to say to you.” 

So that was it. He wanted Denys to rehabilitate 
him in Dawn’s eyes. Denys’s mood hardened. He 
listened for what should come. 

“You think I married Rachel for what she can 
give me. I didn’t. I married her because, — mainly 
— I wanted to give her whatever happiness is pos- 
sible in her suffering life. She is an angel — far above 
other women no matter how sweet and good they 
may be. She wakes something in me no other 
woman has wakened. It is agony to me that she 
must suffer. You see — I am not so despicable as 
you thought.” 

“No,” said Denys, not denying that he had 
thought him despicable. 

“She only thinks of me — of us, — never of her- 
self. She leaves me free as air. She wants to give 
me all she can! she was always one to give. I am 
as dear as a son to her. She wants me to have what 
her son should have had if she had a son. I would 
not have married her for that. I would have chanced 


THE ANCIENT ENEMY 


187 

it with an undowered girl. I even thought of a 
future — British East Africa is full of chances, gold- 
en chances. Do I look as if I could rough it? I 
don’t. Well, I can. So could Margery — with me.” 
The name seemed to have slipped out by accident. 

“Will you tell Dawn Finucane what I have said?” 
he went on wearily. He stood up and stretched and 
yawned before the sinking fire. “She wasn’t for 
me — Dawn, I mean. I’d never have satisfied her. 
Margery’s another matter; she knows the worst 
of me and the best. You are a lucky fellow, Denys 
Fitzmaurice.” 

He went off to bed, stumbling with fatigue. They 
did not touch any more during his visit on the sub- 
ject of his marriage. 


CHAPTER XXI 

TROUBLE BREWING 

S NOW set in that year in the third week of Janu- 
ary and lasted almost until May Day. It was 
enough to cure all aspirations after a good old- 
fashioned winter. There was a deal of suffering. 
Sheep and lambs perished in the successive blizzards 
and the question of fodder became very acute. They 
were accustomed in those parts to mild winters, when 
there was grass for the beasts all the winter through. 
The little stocks of hay were soon depleted. There 
was nothing to do but to get the cattle and sheep 
under shelter and feed them with what they could. 
The ivy was the only green food to be had, and the 
creatures lived on the ivy if they did not thrive on 
it: fortunately it was very plentiful. 

It was a lean and an anxious time. The snow 
had drifted so that in many places it was several feet 
in depth. Denys went out one day with his alpen- 
stock to see to the animals on the land round about 
Murrough. He had sheltered them in the lower 
floor of the house and had done all he could to 
make them comfortable. They were not likely to 
starve for want of ivy, for Murrough was covered 
with it in abundance. 

It was the lambing-season and he had all the 
anxieties of the shepherd. Fortunately the snow 
had frozen pretty hard by this time so that there 
was less risk to the flocks and the shepherds. Night 
after night Denys was out with the sheep. In the 
struggle against starvation for so many creatures, 
he forgot to be love-sick for Dawn Finucane. She 
was there, like a clear star, shining in the hidden 
188 


TROUBLE BREWING 189 

country of his mind, but he no longer fretted and 
hungered for her face. 

There was a truce between Man and Nature. 
The animals came about the house to be fed. The 
rabbits crept about the frozen ground like little 
ghosts at night. The small birds came to be fed, 
and the gulls from the open sea, and the rooks, by 
force majeure carried off the food with hoarse 
screaming cries of satisfaction. There had to be 
food left for the little ones where the bigger ones 
should not find it. The robins came into the house 
and pecked at the loaf and butter while they sat 
at table. When Denys was obliged to shoot a fox 
that stood gazing in at the window one morning he 
felt as though he had betrayed a thing that trusted 
him. 

There was a good deal of misery, too, in the 
ragged villages, where there were no great stocks of 
turf, since the rain had come down in the previous 
season in such “teems and polthoges” that most of 
the turf had to be left to lie out in the bog all win- 
ter. Denys, as Lord Leenane’s agent, worked with 
the priest and the doctor and some other representa- 
tive men to keep the people alive. He was helped 
by a substantial cheque from Mrs. Arundel; but the 
difficulty was to get supplies even when one had the 
money to pay for them. 

It was Dr. Morris who first reported the queer 
sayings of the people to Denys. 

“You’re a public benefactor, — that’s what you 
are, Mr. Fitzmaurice,” said the doctor, who had a 
richly-rolling brogue and dark eyes that might be 
said to be richly-rolling too. He had Spanish eyes, 
yellow in the whites of them, a heavy thatch of dark 
hair and a brilliant color. “The divil a bit o’ 
thanks you’ll get for it. The old women — aye, and 
the old men, are putting it about that it’s the first 


190 


TROUBLE BREWING 


of seven hard winters — they’ve got hold of some old 
prophecy and that it’s taking the people’s fires from 
them you are, with the bad times coming.” 

“I’ll give them fires,” said Denys, with his vision- 
ary look, “and something to put in the pot as well. 
Look what happens to them every year when the 
Flesk overflows its banks and is out for miles, and 
all the cattle and sheep drowned and the land made 
brackish. I’ll tie up the Flesk within its banks and 
the people will be blessing my name.” 

“Maybe, maybe,” said the doctor easily. “They’re 
saying moreover that by buying up all that land 
along the coast you’ve destroyed the little farms. 
The people won’t be able to get the sea-weed or the 
sea-sand and the fishermen won’t be able to take 
the harvest of the sea.” 

“We shall not interfere with them,” said Denys, 
aghast. “Ancient rights will be respected. In fact, 
for a considerable time to come, we shall only graze 
sheep there. It will be as it is perhaps long after 
we are all gone. That deal was a deal in futures, 
doctor. The future may be a long way off, although 
I don’t think it is.” 

“To be sure, to be sure,” said the doctor, wonder- 
ing what maggot Denys Fitzmaurice had got in his 
brain. “They’re a harmless people and kind people 
but they’re very simple. It might be that someone 
had been putting them up to mischief. It’ll die out, I 
dare say. See all the help you’re giving them with 
the turf. Didn’t you share your ricks?” 

“They went a very short way,” said Denys; 
“there’s nothing in that. But I shouldn’t like the 
people to be against me. I didn’t know I had an 
enemy in the world.” 

“Maybe you haven’t. There was a fellow you 
sacked out of Leenane’s when you came into it. I 


TROUBLE BREWING 


191 

don’t know rightly what for. Something about kill- 
ing an ass, I think.” 

“I remember, Michael Casey. A bad lot and a 
bully. The people wouldn’t listen to him surely. He 
used to act as rent warner on the estate and he 
frightened some of the people.” 

“I never knew a bailiff to be good for anything 
yet,” said the doctor. “He might be at the root of 
it.” 

The walls of snow stood ten feet high by the road- 
side hedges till nearly May Day. Eyes ached for 
the sight of a green field and ears for the sound of 
running water. The early spring had gone by, frozen 
to death. 

Suddenly she came to life as the Palace of the 
Sleeping Beauty came to life, all hurry and bustle 
and commotion. Everything had to get a chance. 
Snowdrop and crocus, daffodil and primrose must 
fall into the lap of spring and live their little hour 
with the summer flowers tumbling upon them in a 
wild profusion. Such a smell of the long-prisoned 
earth, with the new green grass come alive and the 
flowers pushing their heads up everywhere and the 
bushes bursting to full leaf and all the birds singing 
like mad! 

In one of the bound volumes of music which had 
belonged to Denys’s mother, and her mother before 
her, full of old-fashioned songs: — “Buy-a-Broom,” 
“There’s a Bower of Roses,” “My Peace of Mind’s 
Ruined,” “I Go Bound While You Go Free,” and 
such things, there was one that came to Denys’s 
mind, as suiting the season. It had a chorus begin- 
ning: “Oh, such a getting upstairs!” It was indeed 
“a getting upstairs” for the lark climbing out of 
sight and the flowers scaling the invisible dark. 

It was a wonderful May for the travellers to 
come home, and all preparations had been made, 


192 


TROUBLE BREWING 


but still they did not come. The Dowager, accus- 
tomed to foreign travel as she was, had stood in a 
Roman Square in the effulgent sunlight to see a pro- 
cession pass, had gone straight from it into a great 
church, cold as stone, — St. John Lateran, high 
above the Campagna, where the stately House of 
God builded by hands shut out the warm sunlight, 
and the scent of new hay was blown up from the 
wide plain. The result was Roman fever, and at 
the Dowager’s age it was serious. Leenane wrote 
to Denys that he knew his mother would weather 
the storm : she was far too profoundly interested in 
life to think of leaving it, — and she had announced 
her intention of staying on in the world to see Dawn 
married. More, she wanted to see her grandchil- 
dren. “When I know the family succession is safe,” 
she had said, “I shall be ready to meet my Maker.” 

Leenane reported this saying to Denys with a 
sublime unconsciousness. Perhaps he had forgotten 
that moment when he had been aware that Denys 
was sweet on Dawn; perhaps he had never taken 
it seriously, although he would certainly have pre- 
ferred Denys as a son-in-law to Hilary Arundel. 
Still he had not been able in this connection to for- 
get Denys as a touzle-headed boy, dressed like a 
peasant, sitting on the sunny side of the ditch, to 
whom he had played Providence. 

There was a drought that summer, wonderful to 
relate, and the people’s little wells ran dry while 
the water trickled away from the bogs and the 
river fell lower than any man remembered it. 

Sometime in the summer Lord Leenane came home 
alone. 

“No use moving the family,” he said. “My 
mother just lives on by reason of her indomitable 
will. I left them at an old convent in the hills. We 
shall take her to the Riviera for the winter, and I 


TROUBLE BREWING 


193 


must be at hand. I don’t want my old mother to 
die without seeing me. So you’ll have to carry on 
a bit longer without me.” 

Denys had no objection to carrying on. He was 
dining with Lord Leenane the evening of the day 
of his arrival in the little room at Castle Clogher 
overlooking the waterfall, which wa$ called the 
Little Parlor. It had a groined roof, painted blue 
and fretted with stars, and the wide window com- 
manded a lovely view of bog and mountains; be- 
tween the mountains a silver flash of sea. 

Usually the Little Parlor was full of the sound 
of the waterfall; now too tiny a thread of water 
ran to make even a little song. 

Denys listened for the name he wanted to hear 
and it did not come. He waited so long that a dull 
suspicion came to him of a possible design in its 
withholding. Leenane was devoted to his daughter. 
She was so much the central fact in his existence 
that she could not long be out of the conversation. 

The name came at last, so naturally that all 
Denys’s suspicions were put to flight. 

“Dawn has turned down another highly eligible 
young man,” said Leenane. “This time a sprig of 
the Roman aristocracy, Prince Capaletti. I can’t 
say I’m sorry. I don’t want a foreigner for my 
girl. But my mother, who holds on to the world 
as keenly as ever from her sick-bed, is furious. The 
Prince is immensely rich, it seems, and the women 
rave about his looks. I don’t see them myself; 
Sophie says he is a typical Roman patrician, and that 
he walks like the wind. Maybe so; I prefer the 
islander. I like your looks better, Denys.” 

Certainly Leenane must have forgotten that old 
suspicion of his. Fortunately the shaded candles on 
the round table set in the window did not betray 
Denys’s sudden rush of color. 


194 


TROUBLE BREWING 


“She has turned down a couple of good islanders 
since we went out,” Leenane went on. “The Ital- 
ians gape at her when she goes through the Roman 
streets as though they saw a goddess come to life! 
Their women are very beautiful, but they have not 
the height and free grace of my girl.” 

“I hope she is not still thinking of Arundel,” he 
went on, after a pause. “I don’t think she is. Dawn 
has too much spirit for that. What do you say, 
Denys?” 

Denys was not obliged to give an answer, which 
he would have found difficult. 

“I wonder why I asked you that, boy!” Leenane 
went on, with a little laugh at himself. “Your op- 
portunities for studying the ways of women have 
been less than mine. They are mysteries to most of 
us. Some men think they can spy on women. They 
are coxcombs and rotters at that. Women must 
keep their secret till they choose to reveal it to some 
man.” 

Denys could have said with certainty that Dawn 
was not thinking of Hilary Arundel. He had had 
no communication with her but he was certain that 
she had cast out of her proud, pure young heart the 
man who had played fast and loose with the affec- 
tions of more than one woman. 

“Any more news of Arundel and the poor woman 
he married for her money?” 

No; Denys had heard nothing. But some hon- 
esty in him impelled him to say that it was hardly 
true that Arundel had married Mrs. Aarons for 
her money. 

“Tut-tut!” said Leenane testily. “I know that 
fine cock-and-bull story you told me. He is devoted 
to the lady and he married her to make her happy, 
while all the time he and the girl he’s in love with 


TROUBLE BREWING 


19 5 

are waiting to step into her shoes. It’s a horrible 
story to my mind.” 

Denys would not admit that it was a horrible 
story. 

“No, no,” he said. “You should know the lady 
he has married. Perhaps he is dominated by her 
personality. He is devoted to her, really and truly 
devoted. He gives her even a reverence which he 
may not give to any other woman.” 

Leenane flung out his hands with a gesture of 
dislike and despair. 

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “I’m rather 
surprised at you, Denys, taking his part like that. 
Anyhow, I’m very glad that it is not Dawn who 
waits for a woman’s death to step into her shoes. 
Don’t let us talk about it any more. I am sick of 
the subject.” 

Denys forbore to say that he had not raised it. 
They were sitting by an open window and the moths 
came wheeling in from the night, immolating them- 
selves in the candles. There was not a sound out- 
side, except the far-away barking of a dog, which 
seemed to accentuate the silence. 

“The river is very low,” said Denys. “I’ve never 
known it as low and my father says the same. There’s 
hardly a drop of water going over the fall.” 

“Yes, indeed,” said Leenane, and laughed. “It’s 
a queer happening for this part of the country. I 
hear, Denys, that the people are grumbling at you. 
They say you’re taking away their water supply as 
well as the turf for their fires. They’ve raked up 
an old prophecy that this part of the country will 
yet be so dry that there’ll be no chance for the people 
in it, let alone the beasts.” 

“I know it,” said Denys. “I have been warned. 
The well of St. Senan is very low this year. No one 
has ever seen it so low. If it runs dry they will 


196 


TROUBLE BREWING 


take it as a bad omen and lay the blame on my 
drainage-works.” 

“It won’t run dry,” said Leenane. “The rain’s 
coming. Ah, there’s a flash of lightning! I thought 
the storm was blowing up ; it’s so still and hot. The 
drought is at an end.” 


CHAPTER XXII 

CALAMITY 

T hat night’s storm was long remembered. It 
was what the old people called a dry storm. 
All night long the earth and skies ached for the re- 
lief of rain which the torn and shattered heaven 
seemed powerless to release to them. Denys and 
Leenane sat over the fire and talked. There was 
no home-going for Denys in such a storm: and his 
father would not expect him. But some time when 
the storm was at its height there came a terrific roar 
and rumble above all the noise of heaven’s artillery, 
and both men leaped to their feet. 

“The arsenal in the camp has been struck,” said 
Leenane. 

There came a series of explosions and the win- 
dows rattled as though shaken by a gigantic wind. 

That summer, for the first time, there was a sum- 
mer camp at Dooras, about two miles from Castle 
Clogher. Some of the officers were pleasant fel- 
lows, who had relieved Denys’s loneliness by their 
society and entertainments. 

The lamps in the room had suddenly gone out. 
The fire was very low and as the lightning leaped 
into darkness they saw the red glare overhanging 
the camp. Something pretty bad had happened. 

Denys never forgot the race, bareheaded, in the 
storm, across country; they had not waited for a 
horse to be put into the car. Indeed the only horse 
in the Castle Clogher stables at the moment was a 
young, half-broken colt, who would not stand the 
terror of the storm. The camp lay below them on 
the plain, showing a red heart of fire, so they ran 


198 


CALAMITY 


downward for a great part of the way, leaping bog- 
pools, scrambling over a railway embankment, oc- 
casionally wading or sinking over their boots in the 
boggy slush. The way they took would have been 
hardly possible in an ordinary year. The drought 
served them. They leaped across the river, a thin 
thread that gave them no trouble. 

Long afterwards Denys remembered that he had 
heard Leenane sob ; perhaps he had sobbed himself, 
from the terror and the swift running. From the 
last hill they could see that two or three fires were 
burning, close together. Against the flames they 
could see the dark figures of men moving. 

Leenane stumbled over a tussock of coarse grass 
and fell. Denys helped him to his feet and kept 
him a moment to recover his breath. 

“The flames are dying down,” Leenane said. “It 
cannot be so bad.” 

Then Denys remembered. The munitions were 
kept in tents guarded by sentries and isolated by 
sand-heaps. The isolation had served its purpose; 
only a couple of tents were burning. But for the 
sand the explosion would have leveled Castle Clogher 
itself.’ 

It was bad enough, but not as bad as it might have 
been. There was nothing to be done. Some of 
those in the immediate neighborhood of the ex- 
plosion had been blown to pieces. The wounded 
were being attended to. They turned away with 
horror and went home. Before they reached home 
the rain came, heavy hot rain, criss-crossed with the 
lightning, under which the earth smoked. 

Lord Leenane went off the next day and Denys 
returned to the Murrough Farm. The rain had 
interrupted the reclamation work, but not for very 
long; and it was good to see how what had been done 
stood the test of the heavy downpour. 


CALAMITY 


199 


For two or three days the whole countryside 
smoked. There was a heavy smell of explosives and 
the skies were very dark. The heat was intense, 
almost intolerable. The men on the reclamation- 
works were very languid, drenched in sweat as they 
worked, half-clad, in the stifling weather. 

Then one morning the country awoke to a new 
heaviness in the air, a dank and rotting smell. The 
people did not need to be told what it meant. From 
end to end of the country the potatoes were blighted. 
It was a Sunday morning. Denys never forgot the 
strange yellowish gloom in the little church, the 
pale faces of the people, the breathless atmosphere, 
loaded, it seemed, with the sinister smell of rotten- 
ness. 

As he and his father moved to their places in the 
little church he had an idea that people looked curi- 
ously at him. A woman in the seat he entered moved 
it seemed ostentatiously, to the other end, leaving a 
space which no one filled although the church was 
crowded. He opened a window above the seat, but 
no fresh air came in, only a more stagnant breath 
from the miles of rottenness, shot through with the 
smoke of the munitions which yet lay like a cloud 
over the valley. When he had some difliculty with 
the window-cord no one came to help him. The 
people were usually so friendly that he wondered. 

The old priest, Father Tyrrell, who seemed 
hardly able to mount the altar-steps, said a few 
words from the altar as though to climb the pulpit- 
stairs was too much for him. He was very old, and 
he had seen more than one famine. His face looked 
livid in the strange greenish light that came in by 
the windows. The Hand of the Lord was heavy 
upon them, he told them, but they were to be patient 
and to accept the Will for them as they had always 
been ready to accept it. There must be no murmur- 


200 


CALAMITY 


ing. God, who had permitted the calamity would 
send the help. They were to turn to the Lord and 
entreat His Mercy and the prayers of Heaven: 
and those who were in secret sin should humble 
themselves and seek the pardon of God, lest their 
sins should bring further punishment. 

He ended with a groan, and the people looked 
in each other’s pale faces as though each asked the 
other if his sin had brought the calamity. 

Leaving the church where the men lined up by 
the gates for the Sunday gossip, Denys glanced at 
them. They were not talking as usual, but looking 
down, as in sullen acquiescence in their fate. He was 
minded to speak to one or two of the men. The 
visitation angered him, not because it had come, 
but that the people should depend so largely on the 
treacherous root. “It will be another matter,” he 
said to himself, “when I give them the rich land for 
the barren bog;” and his eyes had brightened and 
darkened for a vision of fat cattle grazing and gol- 
den corn waving and comfortable houses standing 
amid their yellow stacks where now was the unpro- 
ductive bog. 

“Come along, lad,” his father said, pulling at his 
arm. No one spoke or lifted his hat. A cold chill 
came upon Denys. What maggot had the people got 
into their heads about him? 

He was away all the next day at a distant fair; 
the utmost he had been able to wring from his father 
in the way of concession was that he might accom- 
pany him to the fairs so long as he was content to 
learn. 

“There’s a lot your college education didn’t do 
for you, my lad,” Pat Fitzmaurice had said, many a 
time, while his eyes doted on his son. 

There were cattle to sell at this particular fair 
as well as to buy, fat cattle which had gone on by 


CALAMITY 


201 


rail a couple of days earlier, as well as store cattle 
that must be bought to replace them. But this 
day an extraordinary thing happened. There were 
no buyers for the beautiful fat cattle; equally no 
one seemed anxious to sell. 

At last a Dublin dealer — a big, loud-voiced, red- 
faced man, who seemed to bring something of towns 
into the country fair, bought the fat cattle. Denys, 
or rather Pat Fitzmaurice, had had transactions 
with Mr. Quigley before. 

“I hear you’re boycotted, Mr. Fitzmaurice, 1 ’ he 
said with a jolly laugh as he marked the cattle, cut- 
ting a triangle of hair away on the flank of each 
animal. “They won’t touch the cattle. So much 
the better for me.” 

They were at the end of the Fair Green, out of 
hearing of the buyers and sellers. Indeed the buyers 
and sellers had seemed to fall away from Denys 
and his father, leaving them and their cattle isolated 
till Mr. Quigley came. 

“Boycotted!” repeated Denys, and his father 
echoed him, in tones of amazement. 

“The bog-boys have got it into their heads that 
your drainage works have brought calamity on the 
country. They say St. Senan’s well has run dry for 
the first time in the knowledge of man. You’re as 
bad as the woman who fried St. Molaga’s trout. 
Sure, God help their little wit!” 

It was absurd, preposterous, ridiculous, — but even 
in his first rage against the ignorant folly of the 
people Denys felt the seriousness of it. Once let 
them take up this attitude and all was lost. They 
could make it impossible for him to live and work 
among them. His father’s blank face of consterna- 
tion hurt while it added to his rage and irritation. 

Father Tyrrell — he felt that he could trust Father 
Tyrrell, — a saintly, wise, cultivated old man, who 


202 


CALAMITY 


had had his training at Salamanca long ago, and 
lived in a strange loneliness from people with his 
own tastes and ways of thinking. When Leenane 
was at home Father Tyrrell found a warm welcome 
at Castle Clogher; otherwise he had little society 
beyond the peasants and small farmers of the coun- 
try-side. But he had a considerable library, a clock 
fitted with Westminster Chimes, and a bob-tailed 
sheep-dog for company in the long evenings, and he 
did not complain. 

Father Tyrrell would be vexed and yet patient 
with the people, as he always was when he came up 
against some superstition so hard to fight as this one. 
He would be grieved for this boycotting of the one 
whose visions had been all of good for them. He 
would do his best; but would he be able to move 
them? Denys doubted that he would, if the people 
had really got this thing into their heads. It would 
be as it was at the time the Pope had removed the 
Friday abstinence for some reason or other. The 
people had merely said: “Pope and all as he is he 
couldn’t do it,” and had abstained more rigorously 
than they might otherwise have done. The inci- 
dent had amused Father Tyrrell very much at the 
time. 

But St. Senan’s Well! Was it possible the Well 
had gone dry after the torrential rains of the days 
following the thunderstorm. If it had gaped in the 
drought surely the rains would have filled it up 
again. 

The mid-day meal was eaten in almost complete 
silence, Pat Fitzmaurice sending anxious fond 
glances, between the mouthfuls, at Denys sitting with 
a set face at the other end of the table. Denys did 
not seem to know what he was eating : absently took 
salt with his apple-tart and then pushed the plate 
away from him untouched. He had eaten barely 
anything. When his father had finished — despite 


CALAMITY 


203 


his preoccupation he waited for that, — he got up 
and said he was going to see if St. Senan’s Well was 
really dry. 

“I’ll come with you, lad,” said Pat Fitzmaurice, 
getting up, slowly. 

“You’ll miss your smoke and your read of the 
W estern People ” said Denys, tenderly. “Let me 
go alone. I’ll cover the ground more quickly.” 

“I’m coming. I want to see the queer sight. Man 
and boy! I’ve lived in this place nigh on seventy 
years and I never knew that well to be empty. 
Would the drains you’re putting in the bog draw the 
waters from the well?” 

“I don’t see how they could. It had its own 
spring.” 

They went off side by side, the young man and 
the old man. St. Senan’s Well lay between the Mur- 
rough Farm and Castle Clogher. It was a little cup 
of clear water under a gnarled and twisted thorn 
tree, dying of its great age. The old branches car- 
ried many votive offerings from pilgrims who had 
been cured at the Well. Crutches and sticks swung 
in the wind from the branches and many old rags 
were tied on to them. 

They looked down into the Well, father and son, 
side by side. Where the clear water had been, and 
the darkly green slimy stones of the encircling wall, 
where the little silver minnows had swum round 
and round or lain, silver on gold, on the yellow sand, 
all was as dry as your hand. There might never 
have been water there. 

Denys stared at what he saw, dumbfounded. For 
all his education, he had enough of the people in him 
to feel that the drying-up of St. Senan’s Well was 
ominous. There was or had been an inscription on 
a flat stone at the head of the Well, now so encrusted 
with moss and lichen that nothing of it could be 
read; — it had run: — 


204 


CALAMITY 


By me, Senan’s Well 
The sick shall have heal; 

When I shall run dry 
Great ills shall come thereby. 

The well had run dry, for the first time in the tra- 
ditions of it; and in Denys’s face was dismay, almost 
a look of guilt, so that Pat Fitzmaurice, looking on 
its young goodliness, pitied his boy. 

“It’s dry, sure enough,” he said. “It can’t be the 
drainage works.” 

“They couldn’t affect it with so much distance be- 
tween,” said Denys, and looked away to where the 
people were coming in twos and threes, by the hard- 
trodden field path that led to the holy waters. Some 
people were quite near, but were standing as though 
they would not approach the well while Denys and 
his father stood there. 

He straightened himself as though he would face 
something that needed all his courage. 

“There will be calamity,” he said. “It is the curse 
of allowing people to live on potatoes. I would have 
given them rich corn-growing lands. They will blame 
it on me — that I have taken away their turf; — I 
have caused this last summer’s drought; I have dried 
St. Senan’s Well and brought the ill upon them. 
Good Lord! And what visions I had!” 


CHAPTER XXIII 

OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 

T HE people’s resentment soon made itself felt. 

The good weather had come back, too late to 
save the potatoes. There had been a bad and bitter 
blight in the air. On the trees the leaves hung 
shrivelled and dead. Everywhere one could smell 
the rotting potatoes; it was impossible to get away 
from it. 

All Denys’s work was at a standstill. Not a man 
would work for him. The young engineer he had 
brought down from Dublin went off to another job 
till the people should come to their right minds. A 
considerable number of men had been employed on 
the drainage works. They loafed idly now at cross- 
roads or stood about the village street, and the 
wives and children suffered accordingly. Even the 
harvest of the sea was threatened. A steam trawler 
had come into the quiet waters and gone off again 
carrying great quantities of fish. What chance had 
the leaky old boats and the oft-mended nets against 
such modern contrivances? 

Denys was in a mood, irritable and broken-heart- 
ed. He hardly remembered Dawn Finucane in these 
days. The work was at a standstill. Soon there 
should come the winter rains and Nature would be 
taking back her own with both hands. All the 
streams would be running turbidly from the moun- 
tains, swelling the Flesk till it overflowed, and 
washing away the work of months, besides taking 
its usual toll of crops and sheep and cattle. The 
river-god would drink his fill of libations this sea- 
son, and the people would die of the tainted food 
205 


20 6 OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 


and the starvation. He had dreamed such dreams 
of their prosperity and had seen such visions. 

The camp had folded up its tents, and had left 
the valley silent and empty by the time November 
came. There were still two or three piteous in- 
valids left behind, too ill to be moved; a wing of 
Castle Clogher had been turned into a hospital for 
them. The strenuous work being at a standstill, 
Denys had leisure to visit these unfortunates, and for- 
get while he was with them his own grievances. 

The boycott was by this time an established thing. 
No more when cattle were to be bought and sold, did 
Denys drive off in the dark of the morning with his 
father to fair or market. His father did better alone. 
His administration of Lord Leenane’s affairs in those 
days was mainly clerical; the more active part had 
to be left to someone else. He missed the active 
country-life which he had learnt to love. He hated 
the askance glances the people cast upon him when 
he met them, even at the church, even when they 
came to him with their complaints or their petitions : 
and on such business they came stealthily. 

“They wrangle less,” he said to himself angrily, 
“because they must come to me to settle their dis- 
putes. Lord Leenane had better appoint a more 
popular agent.” 

Very little report of this trouble went to Italy, 
where Leenane was still held by his mother’s illness. 
Denys kept himself to himself. He would not com- 
plain to his father because the old man felt his son’s 
unpopularity too heavily already. Father Tyrrell 
had done his best. He had preached at and argued 
with the people. “I’ve tried by every means possible 
to convince them of their folly,” he said one day to 
Denys, “but they hold out doggedly against all my 
arguments and persuasions. They’ll starve for 
.their superstitions now.” 


OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 207 

“We must see that they do not starve when the 
time comes,’’ said Denys with a grim little smile, 
like a sad winter sun coming out on a gloomy world. 

“If we could but bring back the waters of the 
Well we might do something with the people,” said 
the priest, half-humorously. 

Denys was looking haggard that winter. He did 
not thrive in the atmosphere of ill-will, and his 
thwarted visions were troublesome. Yet he would 
not go away. He stayed on with a certain dogged 
faith in something turning up to bring the people to 
their senses. It seemed like enough that the some- 
thing would take the form of famine and pestilence. 
Even that perhaps would not bring them to their 
senses. They would lay the sufferings and the deaths 
at his door. 

Meeting Father Tyrrell one day as he was on his 
way to Castle Clogher, to visit a young English of- 
ficer who had been dreadfully burnt in the explo- 
sion, the priest looked at him compassionately. 

“I’d go away if I were you,” he said. “You’re 
looking ill and there’s not much you can do. There 
will be plenty later on. They are still eating the old 
potatoes. The stocks will hold out till after Christ- 
mas. Of course they miss the money coming in — 
but what can you do?” 

Father Tyrrell shrugged his shoulders in a way 
reminiscent of his foreign life. 

“I can’t go away,” said Denys; “I am waiting for 
something to happen. Don’t ask me what it is, be- 
cause I don’t know, but I feel that something is go- 
ing to happen.” 

The old priest stood and looked after the young 
man as he went away from him into the wide deso- 
lation of the bogs. 

“There goes a man,” he said to himself, “suffering 
as badly from a broken dream as other men from 


208 OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 


a broken limb. I wish St. Senan would send back 
the water.” 

They were all pretty heavily burdened in these 
days. The people were like children. He had 
tried to argue with the women, and read it in their 
faces and manners that he, who should be the cus- 
todian of holy things, had failed in his duty. 

Denys went on across the bog, gradually ascend- 
ing the hilly country and came at last to Castle 
Clogher. 

Captain Thierry was just emerging from cotton 
wool. There had been a time when only weary and 
patient eyes had been visible. Skin had been grafted 
on to the worst burns of his face. But he had not 
yet been allowed to see himself in a glass. 

He read constantly and smoked a good many 
cigarettes. Denys had brought him a bundle of 
reading. The boy, — he was little more than that — 
looked up and smiled, as the other boy — who had 
become habitually careworn these last few months, 
drew near and sat down beside him. 

“They think I shall soon be able to go home,” 
he said. “I have been wanting to tell you. There 
is only one cloud on the joy — a pretty thick one. 
Am I an object? I think I must be, for they will 
not let me see myself in a glass. I must look a 
ruffian with this beard. And, — there is a girl. 
There is also my mother — but mothers don’t mind 
somehow.” 

“Nor do girls,” said Denys wisely, “if they are 
the right sort of girls.” 

“Oh, Claire is the right sort of girl,” said Thierry 
eagerly, “only, of course, if one is an object, — would 
it be fair to the girl? Just at first, when I thought 
my eyes were done for, one thing pierced through 
the agonized pain of it — ‘I must give up Claire, I 
must give up Claire.’ I shouldn’t be surprised now 


OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 209 

if I had said it when I was under the anaesthetics. 
That little nurse had told me I shouted a lot. Do 
ask them to let me have a glass. I want to know 
what lies before poor Claire. She has been wanting 
to come ever since it happened but I forbade her. 
It would have been too much for her, poor child. 
Now tell me — how are your affairs going ?” 

“Much as usual.” 

It was the first time they had been allowed any- 
thing like a lengthened talk. The morning was 
very mild and a window stood wide open. In a vase 
there were a few monthly roses and a spray of 
honeysuckle. 

“I have been on my back nearly four months,” 
said Thierry, “and I am weary to be out there.” 

He pointed to the world outside the window, 
bogs, and mountains almost velvet black, save where 
a cloud opened above them as though Heaven looked 
through, and there fell a great shaft of light upon 
all the bog-pools, turning them to dazzling silver. 

“We can manage that any day. I shall bring my 
little car and take you for a spin as soon as the 
doctor says ‘Yes.’ Perhaps the nurse might take 
it on herself. You are your own man again, are 
you not?” 

Nurse Malone was consulted. She was thin, with 
child-like face and spiritual eyes. 

“To be sure,” she said. “Any day at all while 
the fine weather lasts. I mean as long as it’s not 
teeming rain. It’s a lovely day to-day. A pity you 
didn’t bring the little car.” 

“I’ll go back for it,” said Denys. “What’s four 
miles to legs like mine. Nothing. It’s no more than 
that, cutting across the bog. I’ll be here by two 
o’clock if that will suit.” 


2io OTHER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 


where, as a general rule, you don’t ask people if 
they’ve a mouth on them.” 

“I’ll eat before I come back,” said Denys. “You 
look as though a run would do you no harm. You’d 
better let me take you another time.” 

Nurse Malone’s eyes danced with amusement. 

“Just imagine a nurse leaving her patients to go 
tearing over the country with a young man in a 
motor-car,” she said. “Why I’d deserve expulsion 
right off!” 

“Your patients are nearly well. There’ll be noth- 
ing for you to do.” 

“There’ll be plenty for me to do,” she said, and 
a shadow fell over her face. “I’m waiting for it. 
The poor foolish people! I nursed typhus in the 
Islands last year and had a narrow escape myself.” 

“There!” she said as though she admonished her- 
self. “That’s a nice way to be talking as though you 
wanted to frighten people out of their lives. I’ll 
have him ready for you when you come back at two 
o’clock.” 

She followed Denys to the door as he went away. 

“Don’t be letting him see himself in pools or any- 
thing of the sort,” she said. “I don’t know how 
we’re going to break it to him. The only way I 
can think of would be to let him see himself first in 
that Claire Rochford’s eyes. He’s always talking 
about that girl. I wonder if she’ll rise to it.” 

“I wonder,” said Denys, going off. 

“I wouldn’t be too hard on a girl,” sighed the 
little nurse. “He must have been a lovely boy be- 
fore he got burnt. If she’d only think of how he 
went in when he needn’t have done it.” 

Denys came back to find Thierry sitting up, gaunt 
and weak, in a big arm-chair, wrapped in a heavy 
overcoat. 


O THER PEOPLE’S TROUBLES 2 1 1 


“Now doesn’t he look beautiful?” said Nurse 
Malone, and patted the patient’s cheek. 

Denys smiled, but there was something forced in 
the smile. He was afraid that Claire Rochford 
would need all her courage. Poor Thierry, with the 
imploring patient eyes! Would Claire Rochford 
rise to it? 

The invalid sighed deep content as the soft air 
flowed on his disfigured cheeks. His eyes devoured 
the beauty of the day — a black and white day, he 
called it, and marvelled at the light pouring from 
behind the cloud, moving slowly over vale and hill, 
as though an immense hand shed light from its five 
fingers upon the world. 

“I’m thankful for my eyesight,” he said, with 
fervor. 

Half-way across the bog Denys pulled up the 
motor and pointed to the little field where the 
gnarled thorn-tree overhung St. Senan’s Well. 

“There is the cause of most of the trouble,” he 
said; and told the story of the drying up of St. 
Senan’s Well, how he was blamed for it, and the 
belief of the people that calamity would follow. 

“Let me look at it,” said Thierry, who was in the 
Royal Engineers. “I think I could walk as far as 
that with the help of your arm. As Nurse Malone 
says, I should be feeling my feet. What an angel 
that girl is!” 

Denys got out of the car and assisted him to 
alight. They turned aside from the bog-road and 
went slowly across the field to the Well. As they 
approached, a few shawled women who had been 
saying their prayers by the Well, retreated before 
them. 

“We wouldn’t eat them,” said Thierry. “Are 
they frightened of me?” 

“No, no,” said Denys hastily. “It is only that 


2i2 O THER PEOPLE’S TR O UBLES 


they think I’ve no right to be here, — they think my 
presence a profanation.” 

Thierry used a strong word very softly. 

“Let me see this Well of yours now,” he said, 
and went forward to the edge. Denys had a mo- 
mentary terror lest the waters might have come 
back and Thierry see his face for the first time as 
in a polished mirror. The fingers of the hand were 
at the moment pointing downward at the Well and 
the little green field. 

But no, the Well was parched. Not a trickle in 
the muddy dust and sand of it. 

“It is very simple,” said Thierry. “The spring 
is dammed or diverted. The explosion at the camp 
is probably responsible. It shook all this part from 
end to end. It may come back or it may not. The 
spring might have been dried up by the summer 
drought but it should have filled again. Per- 
haps when the floods are out the spring will re- 
appear.” 

“God send it — and soon!” said Denys devoutly. 


CHAPTER XXIV 

THE BENEFACTOR 


A LITTLE later Nurse Malone spoke into Denys’ 
** ear, which she seemed to find sympathetic, her 
trouble about Robin Thierry. 

“He can’t face it,” she said. “We’ve done all 
we could for him and he’s as well as he’ll ever be, 
but we can’t give him a new face. I shan’t be 
able to refuse him the looking-glass much longer. 
I’ve found out one thing. She wanted to come to 
him — that Rochford girl, and he wouldn’t let her. 
I’ve been blaming her in my own mind that she 
didn’t come. I’m half afraid he’ll never let her 
come. He was talking yesterday of volunteering 
for the West African Frontier Force. I said to him : 
‘You know what it is: blackwater fever and you 
won’t live to take your first leave.’ He smiled a 
queer kind of a smile. I don’t think he’d mind if 
he never came back.” 

“So bad as that!” said Denys. 

“I got angry with him,” went on Nurse Malone 
with something like a suppressed sob. “I said to 
him: ‘If it’s suicide you’re after you’re less of a man 
than I took you for.’ I did, God forgive me! And 
he only smiled and said nothing.” 

“Could you get her here?” asked Denys, “with- 
out letting him know?” 

“I thought of it myself — ” Nurse Malone looked 
at him with musing eyes, which all of a sudden 
Denys discovered to be beautiful grey eyes with 
dark lashes — beyond the beauty of the steadfast 
soul behind them. “I’ve got the girl’s address. 
Didn’t I write all the letters for him while his poor 

213 


214 


THE BENEFACTOR 


hands were tied up in cotton wool. She wrote him 
good letters, loving letters. I’ve a mind to try. If 
we fail ...” 

“We won’t fail,” said Denys. 

He felt that he was going to miss Robin Thierry 
very much when he went. Nurse Malone was talk- 
ing of going back to her Dublin hospital as soon as 
she got rid of this last patient of hers. 

“I’d like to know what they’d say to me up there,” 
she said, “if I was to tell them I was waiting on 
here because I expected the famine fever. I’ll come 
when I’m wanted, if I can!” 

They were in the nurse’s little sitting room, off 
the long room which had been used as a hospital 
ward, after the explosion at the camp. A few of 
Nurse Malone’s personal belongings lay about, a 
work-basket, a despatch-case, a few books, — Denys 
noticed that most of these were poetry — photographs, 
a Venetian glass vase with a monthly rose in it. 
They gave the room somehow a pleasant feminine 
atmosphere. 

He glanced idly at a man’s photograph on the 
mantelpiece and was arrested by the debonair gay 
face. 

“What a good-looking fellow!” he said. 

“A great friend of mine,” said Nurse Malone, 
and her eyes suddenly looked down. “A Dr. Van- 
deleur at the Hospital. He’s going to be married 
to a lovely girl, a Miss Nell Creagh. They’ve been 
engaged for years.” 

“And this?” asked Denys, passing on to another. 

“My father. He was killed trying to stop a 
runaway in the hunting-field. Just look at him! 
Isn’t he bonny and young? He was fifty when it 
happened, but sure he wasn’t made to grow old. 
I was terribly fond of my father and he of me. 
Many’s the day I longed to have him back.” 


THE BENEFACTOR 


215 


Poor brave soul ! Denys had surprised her secret. 
Well, well, she carried it bravely. She was a splen- 
did nurse, so cheerful, so courageous, so tender- 
hearted, yet so firm with her patients. 

Before there could be any result of the letter to 
Miss Rochford the first case of sickness occurred in 
the village. The winter rains had set in and the 
mountains were wrapped in chill mist. Just before 
the weather broke there had been a day when the 
Reek, fifty miles away had appeared as though a 
couple of fields off. An ominous sign of the weather 
that. The same evening the sun had gone down, 
pale, luminous, white : a bad sign again. In the night 
the rain began. “We’ll maybe have it for months 
now,” said Denys disconsolately to Nurse Malone. 
“Only for those fools I’d have made all tight against 
the rains by this time.” 

He walked down later on in the day to look at the 
reclamation, a good deal of which would be undone 
if there was going to be a bad winter. He had not 
heard of the case of sickness in the village, but, 
after he had passed through it, something struck 
him violently in the side of the head. His sou’wester 
just saved him. It was a particularly vicious, jagged 
bit of flint. 

He looked in the direction whence it came, a 
gaunt hillside, covered with whin bushes and boulders 
of rock of all shapes and sizes, some as big as a small 
house. 

The wind sighed and lifted the cold mist of rain. 
Nothing stirred; even the rabbits were in their holes. 

He made a stride or two forward, then recog- 
nized the hopelessness of it. He might just come 
upon the one who had thrown the stone. On the 
other hand he might as well look for a needle in a 
rick of hay. It would be ridiculous, chasing a fugi- 


21 6 THE BENEFACTOR 

tive in and out through those boulders and behind 
whin-bushes. 

But he was very angry. His disappointed dreams 
had, so to speak, gone sour in him. He was often 
light-headed with annoyance and indignation at the 
fools who had frustrated all his plans for their good. 

He stalked on, tall and slight in the mist, to the 
abandoned reclamation works, there to make a dis- 
covery which added fuel to his wrath. Something 
had happened to the buildings he had put up. They 
were wrecked; the pumping station and all his plant 
had been pretty well destroyed. 

He set his teeth hard when he realized what had 
happened. They must all have been in it; the 
cowards ! the fools ! They had accomplished more 
ruin in a night, for the place had been untouched 
yesterday, than could be undone in many months. 
There was a big slice of his ten thousand pounds 
gone, thrown away as completely as though it had 
been flung into a bog hole. 

He swore aloud that he would conquer the fools. 
He would bring in expert men to do the work. 
O’Dea, the Dublin engineer, had often asked for 
skilled men rather than untaught laborers. He 
would win in the fight against Nature and ignorance. 
When he had won it would not be for them. He 
could not remember that they were his own people, 
these who had broken his dream. Other men, not 
they, should reap the benefit of what he had done. 

As he went back through the village an old 
woman cursed him. He passed her, taking no notice. 
Then a dog, one of the half-bred collies that were a 
danger and a terror to the passerby, rushed at him. 
He lifted a stick to defend himself and the dog fled 
yelping. Then came the dog’s owner, one Jame- 
sey Geraghty, belonging to the class the people call 
“the tinkers.” A harmless fellow enough when 


THE BENEFACTOR 


217 


sober, Jamesey was a terror when he was drunk, or 
even had taken drink, or drink on him, for there are 
gradations of drunkenness. 

Jamesey Geraghty advanced on Denys, brandish- 
ing a big blackthorn. 

“Is it to be desthroyin’ me little bit of a pup ye’d 
be?” he shouted. “You that’s brought the curse on 
the country. The hunger’s been here these many 
days and the sickness has come now, an’ ye brought 
it, ye unhung villain !” 

Denys raised his stick to defend himself. He 
was aware of people running through the mist, a 
gathering crowd, everyone menacing and hostile, 
where they had been so kind. 

“You are all mad,” he said. “You have brought 
it on yourselves. It was a blackguard thing to de- 
stroy my plant and machinery. Whoever did it shall 
pay for it.” 

Down came the blackthorn with a crashing blow 
and Denys was in the mud. The blood was in his 
eyes and mouth and he had a vague idea that the 
crowd had tried to restrain Geraghty. There was 
a second blow. Geraghty had managed to kick him 
in the face before he was pulled away. Then there 
was the roaring of many waters and the sickness of 
pain went off in mists of unconsciousness. 

When he was again aware of anything beyond 
chaotic and terrible imaginings, he opened his eyes 
on a wall covered with chintz paper which had a pat- 
tern of roses on a trellis. He remembered that 
paper. It was on the walls of the long room at 
Castle Clogher which had been used as a ward for 
the victims of the explosion. He tried to turn his 
head towards the next bed, in which he expected to 
find Robin Thierry, but he could not move, and the 
effort hurt him. He felt as though his head was the 
size of ten, and it ached intolerably, especially in 


2 1 8 


THE BENEFACTOR 


one part where it seemed to him that there must be 
a gaping wound. 

But though he had hardly moved, someone was 
aware that he was awake. A trim, white-clad figure 
came to the bedside, and a pair of compassionate 
eyes looked down upon him — Nurse Malone’s. He 
was very glad it was Nurse Malone and not a 
stranger. 

“So you are awake,” she said, with her air of 
quiet cheerfulness. “That was a nasty and a mean 
thing. Don’t try to talk yet. You’re doing fam- 
ously — a credit to your nurse and doctor. The 
wound is closing nicely, and he didn’t spoil your 
beauty, the brute, though your nose was as big as 
a potato, and much the same shape, when you were 
brought in. The mud on his boots saved you, or 
rather the peat. He’d been damaging your property 
before he damaged yourself.” 

“I thought I heard someone howling when I was 
asleep.” 

“You did. It was Geraghty. I called him a 
brute and he is a brute when he won’t keep from 
the drink. But he’s not a ruffian at heart. He 
howled over you till I had to turn him out.” 

“What day is it?” 

“December the sixteenth. You’ve been a fort- 
night out of the world. Well for you. It has never 
stopped teeming since. The river is out and the 
whole country swamped. There, that’s enough for 
to-day. I expect your head’s aching.” 

“Just one thing, — Thierry?” 

“Out walking with his sweetheart in spite of the 
weather. She’s bonny. She wraps herself in a 
Scotch plaid, the cutest your eyes ever saw. Not a 
bit of her to be seen but her brogues. I’ll tell you 
to-morrow how it all happened.” 

The next day he was allowed to see Robin Thierry 


THE BENEFACTOR 


219 


and the girl, who stood shyly in the background till 
she was introduced as Miss Rochford. 

“Wasn’t I a fool to distrust her?” Robin Thierry 
asked. “Just look at her! Isn’t she like Steven- 
son’s woman: 

‘Trusty, dusky, vivid, true 

With eyes of fire and bramble dew 

Steel-true and blade-straight.’” 

The girl looked up at the disfigured face but there 
was no consciousness of the disfigurement in her 
gaze. The words of the poem indeed fitted her 
well. She was all of a bright brownness, deep lights 
of golden bronze in her hair, in her eyes, underlying 
the wild rose skin. She was little and lovesome and 
even to Denys’s perception she was delightfully 
dressed in furs and velvets just escaping being too 
fine for the rigors of an Irish winter. 

All was well with Robin Thierry. Denys fell 
asleep with a sense of satisfaction after that visit. 

He was allowed to hear little by little news of the 
world out of which he had dropped for a whole 
fortnight. But he had really almost left canvales- 
cence behind before he was told what ravages the 
sickness was making in the villages round about — 
not typhus or typhoid yet, but a kind of enteric from 
which several people had died. 

“There are plenty of nurses and doctors,” Nurse 
Malone reported. “The Local Government Board 
has looked after it, and Lord Leenane telegraphed 
from Italy that no expense was to be spared. All 
that is needed is to be provided at his expense. He 
is coming home as soon as possible. I believe his 
mother is in a bad way.” 

Denys looked up with a queer hopefulness in his 
eyes which puzzled Nurse Malone. She knew noth- 
ing of the Leenanes, nor what the family consisted 


220 


THE BENEFACTOR 


of. She had been too busy with her patients to have 
remembered to ask. 

“Has Lord Leenane any children?” she asked the 
doctor when they had their usual little council on 
the stairs after his visit. He had decided not to 
come again. In a day or two Denys would be quite 
well enough to go back to the Murrough Farm 
where his father was pining for his return. 

“One child, a daughter, Miss Dawn; a lovely girl. 
She walks like the Goddess Juno, a very young god- 
dess, you understand, a perfectly simple, fair, sin- 
cere, and honest creature,” said the doctor, who was 
a bit of a poet. “I’ve told Mr. Fitzmaurice he’s 
not to go near the sick yet awhile. By the way, I 
hear there’s a bad outbreak at Carra Island. Strange 
how it recurs there. They’ll be asking for you, 
Nurse Malone, but they can’t have you. You must 
have a bit of a rest first. You’ve been working very 
hard here.” 

“I always found a change of work the greatest 
rest I could have,” said Nurse Malone, with a sud- 
den brightness of look that made the doctor ask 
himself bewilderedly how he could ever have thought 
her plain. 

“What weather!” he said discontentedly. He 
had put on his mackintosh and opened the door and 
the rain and the wind drove him back. 

“Go off now out of the hall,” he said, “or you’ll 
be taking a bad chill. What a climate! They say 
only a westerner can stand the western climate. 
I don’t know why we’re not washed off the face of 
the earth.” 

He made her stand back while he opened the door 
and got through; she had to help to close it from 
the inside, although it was a heavy door. 

Half-way up the stairs she paused to watch from 
a window the doctor struggling with the wind and 


THE BENEFACTOR 


221 


the rain, his weather-hat down to his nose, his mack- 
intosh filling with the wind till it seemed likely to 
carry him off like a balloon. 

As she looked, the wind shrieked round the 
house, — an eldritch cry. She had heard it cry like 
that before and had not heeded it. Now, with the 
news from Carra, the screaming of the wind and 
the vehement weeping of the rain daunted her brave 
spirit. 


CHAPTER XXV 

NURSE MALONE 


A fter many days of rain, record rain and wind 
even in that country of wild storm, something 
happened in the night. Those who knew what an 
earthquake was said it was a slight earthquake. 
Nature was certainly very disturbed. All over the 
world there were earthquakes, and in the quiet ex- 
empt Green Island there were tragedies. The swol- 
len rivers wrought much havoc. There were land- 
slides in various places, none very serious in their 
consequences; but, that Christmas, a moving bog 
came down from Curraun and blotted out a whole 
village. 

No wonder the people were frightened. Neither 
Denys nor Nurse Malone heard of these happen- 
ings, for they were marooned on Carra Island where 
the typhus had become virulent. While the authori- 
ties were talking of the scarcity of nurses and doc- 
tors owing to the prevalence of sickness, a few de- 
voted people had gone off to the Island, carrying 
what medical requisites and comforts they could lay 
hands upon. 

It was as though the world beyond the grey sea 
was blotted out for them. For days after they 
landed — there had been a fair interval — no one 
could approach the Island. Not a boat built by 
hands could live in the raging torrent that swept 
between the Island and the mainland. Often in bad 
weather the Island was isolated for weeks at a 
time ; there was always plenty of food stored against 
such happenings, so that they need not starve. 
Almost everything else but food was lacking — 
2 22 


NURSE MALONE 


223 


blankets, bedding, drugs, medical requisites of all 
sorts. The day before they crossed, a couple of 
doctors had arrived, volunteers, men in love with 
their profession, who had come down from Dublin 
hospitals as soon as the news reached them that 
there was typhus on Carra. The doctors were very 
interested. No one could explain how it was that 
when typhus had been stamped out elsewhere it re- 
curred on Carra, accompanied, in this instance, by 
an obscure Eastern disease, the presence of which 
puzzled the profession. 

The school-house had been turned into a dis- 
pensary. There was a little room to spare for 
Nurse Malone, who was the only nurse so far, and 
a second was kept in case one of the medical staff 
got ill. 

They had been met and welcomed by a tall thin 
priest who might have been a young man at first 
sight, so alert was he, so slender and upright; but 
the first impression was corrected by the silver hair 
at the temples, the weariness of the eyes and the 
withering of the skin. 

“It’s good of you to come,” he said. “There’s 
plenty of work to be done, though, thank God, the 
doctors came yesterday and brought what they could 
with them. We’ll get no more for many days, I’m 
thinking; we’re in for a time of storm.” 

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning when 
they landed. The two doctors were already out on 
their rounds. They were housed in the presbytery. 
They were going to make a hospital of a couple of 
cabins down by the seashore which were having their 
windows taken out and floors and walls white- 
washed. 

“Ye’ll be getting things in order here,” the priest 
said, “and there’ll be a bit of lunch for you at my 


224 NURSE MALONE 

place at one o’clock. The doctors will be back by 
then.” 

Nurse Malone and Denys opened the cases they 
had brought with them, and set out the articles they 
contained, temporarily, on desks and tables. 

“If I can get a plank of wood and a few tools I’ll 
run up some lovely shelves,” said Nurse Malone. 
“I’m a grand carpenter.” 

“We’ll manage that between us,” said Denys. 

“You would come,” said the little nurse, reproach- 
fully. “I wish I could keep you at jobs like that but 
I’m thinking I won’t be able to do it, especially if 
Father Maguire’s right, and the relief won’t come 
for some time. Look at that sea! Isn’t it green? 
Upon my word, it makes me feel green. I never 
crossed the sea yet.” 

“You would have a bad passage to-day,” said 
Denys. 

“Remember I didn’t want you to come,” said 
Nurse Malone, and added, as though he were a 
child — “you’ll be more anxiety than you’re worth.” 

Her laughing eyes took any possible sting from 
the speech. 

“It’s a better school-house than most,” she went 
on, surveying her new domain, which was light and 
fairly lofty; “and better kept than most. The 
blackboards might do for tables. The floor wants 
scrubbing, and I must see if I can find a white-wash 
brush and a pail of lime.” 

“I’ll do the white-washing,” said Denys. 

“You’ve long arms,” she agreed, “I’d need a lad- 
der, and I never like them. They’re born rickety. 
I never saw a safe ladder yet.” 

She had been turning out her own little room, 
making a clicking noise with her tongue which 
proved that she did not find all satisfactory. 

“Too much upholstery,” she said, reappearing. 


NURSE MALONE 


225 


“I’ll see if I can’t clear out some of it before I sleep 
here. But I daresay I’ll be on duty this afternoon.” 

At one o’clock she appeared, spotless in her 
nurse’s print gown and white cap, her waist caught 
in by a silver belt, the one bit of frivolity she ever 
permitted herself. It would have been a pretty 
figure if she had not been over-thin, Denys said to 
himself. 

“If you don’t want me this afternoon I think I’ll 
do the white-washing,” said Denys. 

“You wouldn’t know how,” she returned. “You’re 
a lily of the field.” 

He flushed as though she had hurt him. 

“You forget that I was brought up at the Mur- 
rough Farm with only one old woman to ‘do for’ 
my father and me. I often white-washed the 
kitchen. It used to get a glorious brown from the 
turf smoke. It was a shame to wash it off, but it 
had to be done, and I liked doing it well.” 

“Oh, you shall do it then,” Nurse Malone said. 
“I think we can spare you lifting the sick and bury- 
ing the dead. You’re not over-strong yet. You 
shouldn’t be here at all.” 

“I didn’t come to white-wash,” said Denys stiffly; 
“anyone at all could do that.” 

She smiled as she looked at him. 

“You’ve a will of your own,” she said. “Good- 
ness help the woman that has to keep you in order !” 

Denys was suddenly shy. 

“Ah, I thought so,” said the nurse to herself. 
“It’s all the more reason for keeping him out of 
danger so far as I can.” 

They walked across to the priest’s house, con- 
spicuous as a two-story house, with an abundant 
supply of windows, in the irregular street of crowd- 
ing cabins ; it stood beside a grey stone church, with 


226 NURSE MALONE 

a dreary belfry, the whole effect a sad, grey mon- 
otony. 

There were two men in the priest’s little sitting- 
room when they entered it — a room made smaller 
by the rows of well-filled bookshelves around the 
wall. The two men stood with their backs to the 
window and their faces in shadow; one was more 
than common tall, the other short and square, both 
young men by their figures. 

“Why, here is an old friend of mine,” said the 
tall young man, and there was the flash of white 
teeth in a most pleasant smile ; the voice was beauti- 
ful, deep, soft and rich. 

Denys almost felt the leap of the girl by his side; 
it was as though her heart leaped. 

“And I wouldn’t wish to work with a better little 
nurse,” the alluring voice went on. Its owner had 
taken Nurse Malone’s hand and was holding it in 
an obviously warm clasp. “Dr. Molyneux, Nurse 
Malone. You’ve heard me talk of her.” 

He still held Nurse Malone’s hand when the in- 
troductions were effected, but presently, with a little 
shyness she withdrew it. 

Apparently the meal was not quite ready yet. Dr. 
Molyneux, Father Maguire and Denys fell into con- 
versation about the books. The tall young doctor 
whom Nurse Malone addressed as Dr. Roger talked 
to his old friend. Scraps of their conversation 
floated to Denys’s hearing. 

“What have you been doing to yourself?” asked 
the deep rich voice, which sounded like a caress. 
“You were always thin but you’ve no business to be 
as thin as you are, Nurse Malone.” 

“Sure I’m hardy,” she replied, in a queer de- 
lighted young voice. “I’ve never an ache nor pain.” 

“You never had in the hospital: so the lazy ones 
let you do their work. Do you remember when I 


NURSE MALONE 


227 

had to prohibit your scrubbing the wards when your 
poor little hands were covered with chilblains?” 

“It did the old chilblains good. It’s no use hum- 
oring them. I’ve had great peace from them since 
you treated them.” 

“Let me look.” 

Denys, in a swift glance sideways, saw Nurse 
Malone’s hands extended and swiftly withdrawn. 

“You should take better care of them,” said Dr. 
Roger. “It’s a pity to spoil them more than you 
can help.” 

A bare-footed child in a pink frock put in a red 
head and mumbled something which Father Maguire 
understood as announcing lunch. It consisted of 
fish, fresh from the sea and excellently fried, and a 
shoulder of mutton, and it was served with consid- 
erable refinement, although the cloth was coarse and 
the glass and cutlery common. These dishes were 
followed by a rice pudding, fruit, and black coffee, 
with cigarettes and a bottle of Burgundy to grace 
the feast. 

“It’s poor accommodation for you,” the priest 
said humbly, when the doctors praised the freshness 
of the fish and the flavor of the mutton; “but such 
as it is, you’re kindly welcome to it. We won’t 
starve on the Island. We’re better off in that way 
than the mainland, for we have to be self-sufficing.” 

After lunch Nurse Malone slipped away and left 
the men smoking and talking about the fire. She 
had promised to come back later for a cup of tea, 
but she explained that she had a good deal to get 
in order before she could sleep, feeling that she 
was ready to begin work on the morrow. 

The talk flowed and it was good talk. Denys, 
smoking his pipe before he placed himself under 
Nurse Malone’s orders, said very little but enjoyed 
the good stories and the well-fought arguments and 


228 


NURSE MALONE 


the play of wit. The priest took his part in the talk, 
although he seemed better content to listen to the 
two doctors, who brought the world to Carra Island. 

“Upon my word,” he said in a pause, while Dr. 
Roger was lighting his pipe afresh, “I haven’t had 
such a pleasant day since I came to Carra twenty- 
seven years ago. I wouldn’t be considering my own 
pleasure beside the poor people’s sufferings, but the 
sickness has brought some good things to Carra, 
sure enough.” 

Denys found a tall boy already employed in white- 
washing the school-house. 

“Is that you, Mr. Fitzmaurice?” called out Nurse 
Malone’s cheerful voice from the inner room. There 
had been a great swishing of water there when 
Denys entered. 

“Haven’t I got a fine white-washer?” she went 
on. “The schoolmaster lent him to me as well as 
the white-wash bucket and brush. You can run 
home now, Johnny. Your father said I could only 
have you for an hour. Tell him I said you were a 
very good boy.” 

The speaker followed her voice and appeared at 
the door of the inner apartment holding out some- 
thing to Denys. 

“It’s an old student’s coat that I came by hon- 
estly,” she said. “It will save your beautiful clothes. 
It is quite clean. You’re sure you want to white- 
wash?” 

“It is the one aim and object of my life.” 

“Ah, now, none of your nonsense ! Here, then, 
put on the coat and get about your work!” 

“I’m going to finish that floor for you first. I 
believe you’ve got chilblains still.” 

“There now,” she said; “you’ll soon be as bad 
as Dr. Roger. He has great old nonsense with him. 
I never knew anyone but him to think of my ugly 


NURSE MALONE 


229 


old hands. He gave me the lovliest stuff you ever 
saw or smelt for the chilblains and he forbade me 
ever scrubbing again, saying that I was too good for 
scrubbing floors, that it was other people’s business 
to do it. He thinks too well of me, does Dr. Roger. 
Anyhow he’s not here now and this is not the hos- 
pital, so I can finish my little room, without asking 
his leave.” 

Denys followed her to the door and looked in. 
The room was practically empty and the window 
opened wide to the wind and the rain. Without a 
word he took the scrubbing-brush from her hands. 

“I heard you say you had to go to the shop,” he 
said. “You’d better do it while there’s light and 
I’ll finish this.” 

“You — with those lovely clothes!” 

“You can give me something to kneel on. I saw 
an old cushion somewhere. You had no business to 
be kneeling on the floor. You’ll have rheumatic 
knees before you’re twenty-five!” 

“Listen to him! You’d think he was a doctor,” 
she said in high delight. It struck Denys for the 
first time that with a little flesh on her bones Nurse 
Malone would cease to be plain and become pretty. 
Indeed he had long ceased to regard her as plain. 
How could she be with those eyes ? 

When she came back, having bought half the 
shop — she said, — she found the floor washed, a 
bright fire lit in the grate and Denys on the ladder 
continuing the whitewashing. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

QUARANTINE 

S HUT up in the Island intimacy grew fast. There 
were not nearly enough hands for the work, 
and Denys took his part in helping Nurse Malone 
and acting under the direction of the doctors. Dr. 
Roger, as Nurse Malone always called him, kept 
his eye on Denys and sometimes held his wrist as 
though he were feeling his pulse. 

“I’m not half satisfied with your being here,” he 
said one of those earlier days. “As soon as the re- 
lief comes you go into quarantine at the other end 
of the Island preparatory to being cleared out alto- 
gether.” 

“And you?” said Denys. 

“Oh, I’m having the opportunity of my life. So 
is Molyneux. As for Nurse Malone you couldn’t 
dislodge her. She’s a little limpet when she gets a 
case to her liking.” 

He was certainly a splendid specimen of man- 
hood, almost aggressively strong and well. There 
was vitality in his looks, in the curl of his hair kept 
well under restraint; in his color, his deep speech, 
his laughter — everything about him spoke of life 
and the good-nature that came of perfect well-being. 
No wonder poor Nurse Malone was dazzled. He 
had a softened way with her, being one of the men 
who must always have something different in their 
way with women; but there was more than that; 
there was affection and admiration in his gaze when 
he looked at her, in his rallying manner when he 
spoke to her. 

“She’s true as steel, true as steel, that little 
230 


QUARANTINE 


231 


woman,” he said one day to Denys. “She’s all nerve 
yet never nervous. I’ve never seen her flinch though 
she has a soft little heart. You can always trust 
her to obey you implicitly. She never complains. 
There’s no one I’d like better to have with me in a 
difficult case than Nurse Malone.” 

The two talked freely of “Miss Alice” who was 
apparently Dr. Roger’s fiancee. 

“And what did she say at all when she heard you 
were coming here?” Denys heard Nurse Malone 
ask one day. 

“Took it like a Trojan,” Dr. Roger replied. 
“You see she’s going to be a doctor’s wife. It’s as 
hard sometimes as to be a soldier’s wife, and no one 
ever thinks of comparing the two.” 

It was pretty to see Dr. Roger making Nurse 
Malone eat, and ordering her to lie down when she 
would stick to her post despite obvious exhaustion; 
but her eyes as she glanced at Dr. Roger on these 
occasions were something from which Denys turned 
away. Poor Nurse Malone ! 

After a fortnight, a curiously peaceful time de- 
spite the anxiety and the hard work, the weather 
moderated. No more did the white watery sun 
shine from a vaporous sky, heaped with watery blobs 
of cloud. There came a season of frost with blue 
skies and a bright sun, and the water in the Sound 
subsided to a calm and murmuring tide, where it had 
run mountains or at least hillocks-high. 

The relief came, and on a morning soft as April’s, 
Denys rather sadly obeyed orders and said good- 
bye to those with whom he had been in such intimate 
connection for a whole fourteen days. He did not 
know how he was going to put in his quarantine, 
even with the help of the books the relief had 
brought, which were handed over to him, since no 


232 QUARANTINE 

one else was going to have time to read, and it was 
no use infecting the books. 

“Good-bye, now,” said Dr. Roger, in his deep 
jolly voice, — a voice that would coax the birds off 
the bushes as Nurse Malone had described it, — 
“I don’t want to see you again, not at least till we 
are all back among the healthy. There’s only one 
way you could come back, and we’d rather have 
your room than your company.” 

Denys was lugubrious at the thought of his soli- 
tude for some weeks to come. He had had no let- 
ters for a fortnight. The first letters he received 
brought the news of the earthquake and the result- 
ing trouble. The newspapers were full of the bog- 
slide. The sickness was subsiding on the mainland. 

“Then I must sit stewing,” he said discontentedly, 
“with so much waiting to be done.” 

“Just as well for you to stew,” the doctor replied. 
“I wonder you didn’t get the fever; you were a very 
likely subject for it. Try to forget the disappoint- 
ment and the ingratitude of the people. They are 
only children. They will be ashamed of themselves 
presently.” 

“I hate to leave you all,” said Denys. “Am I to 
go on day after day, knowing nothing of what is 
happening?” 

“If you can get a fisherman to row you round here 
now and again,” the doctor replied, glancing from 
the window of the temporary hospital out on the 
blue and sparkling sea which lay beyond a narrow 
strip of sand. “Of course you couldn’t land; but one 
of us could go down to the water’s edge and shout 
you the news. I don’t know if you’ll get anyone to 
row you. A queer thing, the exemption of that end 
of Carra from the fever! Naturally, they are des- 
perately afraid of it. If I were you I should write 
about what you know, the things that need remedy- 


QUARANTINE 233 

ing in Ireland, the work you’ve been doing, and pub- 
lish it. You’ll bring us help maybe. The fishing- 
fleet is a scandal here. The boats couldn’t weather 
any kind of storm. No wonder the foreign fisher 
fleet poaches our waters.” 

After a few days Denys found a fisherman will- 
ing to row him round to the infected end of the 
Island, for a couple of shillings and a drink. He 
was very particular about the drink because a faint 
heart was more likely to take the fever. 

There was not much doing at the fishing and Matt 
Burke became an object of envy to the other fisher- 
men, many of whom had refused Denys, because the 
drink and the florin had become an every day affair. 
Despite the writing, which was becoming easier by 
practice, and the reading, he found the time hung 
pretty heavily on his hands. He had made friends 
with a little spaniel which seemed to belong to no- 
body in particular, — the little creature had come in 
on a piece of wreckage some time early in the winter 
— and had made her his own for the sum of half a 
crown. “Isn’t it a quare thing the like o’ her would 
be saved,” said the man who had picked her up, “an’ 
Christians gone to their watery grave? She’s no 
use to me, sir. For all she’s quiet wid the childhar 
she does turn an impident eye whin I spake sharp 
to her, as though she’d be sayin’ ‘Who are you 
spakin’ to, me man?’ ” 

The little dog had been called Prince, without the 
smallest reference to her sex. Denys tried a variety 
of names and found she leaped at Flora. So Flora 
she became, and a very delightful, amenable little 
dog she proved to be. Denys solaced some of his 
loneliness by teaching her tricks, which caused great 
amusement to the little community among which he 
lived. “Isn’t he a lovely fellow?” said the women, 
when Flora crossed her paws and begged, swam, 


234 QUARANTINE 

“died,” looked for hidden objects, learned all such 
tricks with an ease that made Denys suspect mem- 
ory, or, at least, inheritance. 

Flora went with him in the boat, lying on an oil- 
skin with one watchful eye fixed on him. She was 
likely to prove a great alleviation of his loneliness, 
and she was a dog of great character; she had al- 
ready justified her former possessor’s estimate of 
her “impidence” by disregarding his advances when 
they met, while giving a lazy wag of the tail for 
the children. 

Denys listened with amusement one morning to a 
conversation outside his window, between Mrs. 
Mullarkey, his landlady and another woman. 

“They say he’s harmless enough, stravagin’ 
around wid the little dog at his tail,” said the other 
woman; and Mrs. Mullarkey replied: 

“Och, indeed, he’s rale decent. I wouldn’t say 
he’d much wit, but the antics of the little baste of a 
dog do be quare in themselves. Troth ye’d be dyin’ 
wid laughin’ at him; an’ yet wouldn’t you say the 
man was soft that gev’ time an’ trouble to tachin’ 
the like to a brute baste?” 

“Sure the Quality’s very fancy wid their dogs,” 
the strange woman responded. 

At this point Denys thought well to show himself 
and was received with quite unabashed smiles by the 
two women, the stranger to him remarking that it 
was a lovely little dog he had, and when she was in 
service on the mainland there was a little dog just 
like him and he was a good mother if ever there was 
one. 

Ten days or so of Denys’s quarantine had gone by 
when there came another stormy and wild interval, 
so that his visits of inquiry were interrupted. Fie 
managed to keep boredom from the door by writ- 
ing a series of articles and sending them broadcast. 


QUARANTINE 235 

It seemed to him that he had discovered a power of 
writing which he had not suspected in himself and he 
was very anxious to see what would happen to his 
ventures. This labor had solaced the grey days. 
Nevertheless he was glad when the sun shone again. 
By this time it was February, and he awoke to a 
morning of dappled skies and a wind from the south 
that set all the birds to singing. 

The last report he had had of the sickness was 
reassuring. They had isolated it successfully and 
there were no more patients. The two deaths which 
had occurred seemed likely to be the last, for the 
other patients were convalescent. For some reason 
unexplained the fever had taken a light toll this 
time. 

The boat made of skins stretched on wattles, car- 
ried him buoyantly over the shining and sparkling 
waters. His spirits rose with the leap of the cor- 
rach. His quarantine was nearly up. He had found 
health on the Island. He was going back full of 
courage and energy to take up the work which had 
been so ruthlessly and ignorantly destroyed — to 
build it up again. The people whom he had helped 
to save would have their eyes opened. Darkness 
and superstition and ignorance could blind them no 
more to the benefits he was about to bestow, had 
bestowed upon them. 

The sparkle and glitter of the league-long water 
was in his eyes as the corrach pulled near the shore. 
Someone had seen him coming, not Nurse Malone, 
nor Doctor Roger, either of whom usually came to 
call tidings of good cheer to him across the water. 
It was Dr. Molyneux who came. Somehow his 
heart sank at the absence of his special friends. 

“Roger has got it,” the doctor called to him. 
“Nurse Malone’s in charge. We’ll pull him through, 
never fear, though he’s a bad case.” 


236 QUARANTINE 

Day after day, Denys came for news. It was a 
life-and-death struggle. Dr. Roger had offered little 
of the resistance that might have been expected from 
his splendid physique. “It is his heart we are afraid 
of,” shouted Dr. Molyneux as through a speaking 
trumpet, one day when the sea again showed cats- 
paws and there was no likelihood that the corrach 
would be in use for some days to come. 

Denys put his quarantine in jeopardy and walked 
by the shore on the succeeding stormy days, when 
he was wet through with the spray of the heavy 
waves, in his eagerness for news. For days it fluc- 
tuated. There came a very bad day. Dr. Roger 
could hardly live out the night. Denys went away 
heavy-hearted, thinking of the brave splendid fellow 
and the woman who loved him. 

The next day he was still alive; the next there 
was a slight improvement. Little by little, and after 
many days, during which the patient’s condition 
fluctuated, Dr. Molyneux allowed himself to be 
hopeful. The very last day of Denys’s quarantine 
the report was that the patient was doing well; there 
were no fresh cases; and as soon as Nurse Malone 
would allow anyone else to take her place by Dr. 
Roger’s bedside she was to be quarantined. Six 
weeks more would see them all off the Island. 

“There’s a young lady staying in Sherry’s Hotel 
just facing the Island will be glad to see you,” Dr. 
Molyneux bellowed through his closed hands. “She 
is Miss Mandeville, Roger’s sweetheart. You can 
tell her that she owes his life to Nurse Malone.” 


CHAPTER XXVII 

“oh, is it you, my own love?” 

D enys walked up and down with Alice Mande- 
ville on the long level sands in front of 
“Sherry’s.” Carra lay in the midst of a magnificent 
bay. This half-moon of coast holding the bay within 
it, was hers, Mrs. Arundel’s property. It was the 
next parish to America as the people said. Not a 
patch of land, except the Island lay between where 
they walked and Sandy Hook. The western sun 
was covering the mainland and the Island with 
golden haze, breaking up the quiet heaving sea into 
a myriad of glancing facets, turning the sea-gulls 
as they darted and flew, to things of living silver and 
gold; making the heron as he stood lonely by a pool, 
a creature of light. 

Alice Mandeville was, like her lover, more than 
common tall. Her face had an almost perfect 
beauty of color and outline; some people might not 
have thought the short upper lip, revealing white 
small teeth when she smiled, an imperfection. That 
short upper lip had the innocence of a child’s lip, 
it was full as though “Some bee had stung it newly.” 
Her brown eyes were soft and gentle, her voice 
music itself; and she had a certain stateliness which 
went well with what Denys vaguely perceived to be 
beautiful attire. It was a Redfern coat and skirt 
worn with sables. Such an apparition of beauty 
and elegance could seldom have flashed upon “Sher- 
ry’s,” whatever might happen in days to come, when 
the transatlantic base which Denys prophesied 
should be an accomplished fact. 

Denys, as he walked up and down with Miss 
237 


238 “OH, IS IT YOU, MY OWN LOVE?” 


Mandeville, waiting for the car which should take 
him the first stage of his journey, saw, with his 
mental vision, while he listened to the lovely voice, 
the new Belfast that was to spring up in the west. 
He saw the fleet lying easily at anchor in the bay. 
He had been told that the fleet had come in one 
night at midnight with a prodigious puffing and pant- 
ing which had frightened the people out of their 
lives. When dawn broke they had seen it lying at 
anchor: about ten o’clock without disorder or con- 
fusion it had quietly steamed away. 

Down at the horns of the land he saw the trans- 
atlantic vessels lying. He saw the dockyards, the 
ship-building yards — all the bustle of life. Then 
he came back to the sweet voice, the gulls screaming 
and dipping, the cormorants diving, the heron still 
fishing in the pool. 

He could have been absent only for a few sec- 
onds, for he had not lost the thread of Miss Man- 
deville’s conversation. She was saying what they 
would repay Nurse Malone, so far as anyone could 
repay priceless service; apparently she was in a po- 
sition to play Providence if she would. She was 
asking Denys what could be done. Had she people 
who could be helped? A year’s foreign travel? A 
little house of her own? Help to start a nursing 
home if she wished it. 

Something of unutterable sadness came down on 
Denys’s mood. The futility of it all smote him. 
There was nothing that could be done for Nurse 
Malone. She had saved the life of the man she 
loved for this beautiful creature. Her needs were 
so simple. Denys had never heard of any relatives, 
beyond the father who had been killed hunting. He 
knew, as though Nurse Malone had said it herself 
in his ear, that there was nothing to be done for her. 

And the Bay. Would it really be better when 


“OH, IS IT YOU, MY OWN LOVE?” 239 


all this shining innocence had departed and a great 
city, a hive of industry, sprang up in its place? His 
thoughts went back to the thing that had been said 
in his hearing when he sat on the sunny bank above 
the Little Bog and dreamed. “He’ll have the Sec- 
ond Sight like his mother.” It was not always well 
to have the Second Sight — for the possessor. 

He had refused the hospitality of “Sherry’s” to 
the proprietor’s evident relief, for the mainland 
was still terrified of the Island. He had a drive of 
forty miles before him, at the end of it the slow 
train which should take him to Drum, where his 
father would meet him with the pony-trap. Lucky 
for him that they had just started a motor-mail 
service ! A year or two earlier it would have been 
the long car which now lay in the shed at the back 
of “Sherry’s” waiting on the tourist season, which 
began early there because of the trout and sea-fishing. 

Miss Mandeville, accompanied by her maid, was 
patiently waiting till the quarantine was over and 
Dr. Roger Vandeleur free to return to her. If 
things had been going badly with him she had in- 
tended to get to the Island somehow in time to see 
him. The news of his illness had recalled her from 
Italy. “Do you think I should have been sitting here 
and he wanting me?” she asked with a sudden fire in 
the depths of her brown eyes. “I should have 
bribed a fisherman to take me across and leave me 
there. Once I was there, they could not have turned 
me away.” 

Denys received such a heart-stirring welcome from 
his father as repaid him for much of what he had 
gone through. There was very little said or done; 
but the “I’ve wanted you, boy,” the handclasp, the 
moisture in the blue eyes, the tremulousness of the 
smile, spoke eloquently. 

The blackthorn was all out in bloom; the prirm 


240 “OH, IS IT YOU, MY OWN LOVE?" 

roses were showing like faint stars on every bank; 
the lambs were little white blobs in the shadowy 
fields beside their large soft mothers ; blackbirds and 
thrushes were singing as they drove homewards. 
Patrick Fitzmaurice had handed over the reins to 
Denys with: “I don’t see as well as I used,” an abdi- 
cation which touched Denys sharply. His father 
had been so unwilling to abdicate. 

“You must get glasses, Father,” said Denys. 

“My father and his father before him lived to be 
over eighty and never wanted glasses,” the old man 
said obstinately. “I’d like to think I’d be the same.” 

A light broadened before them like a full moon 
rising, and they heard the sound of a large motor- 
car ascending the hill. The rays of light spreading 
on the darkening sky reminded Denys of a very fine 
Aurora Borealis he had once seen. There was just 
time for him to jump down, take the little mare by 
the head and lead her into a gateway, keeping her 
quiet with talk and caresses before the monster 
passed. 

“It’s Leenane’s,” said Pat Fitzmaurice from his 
post of observation in the trap. “Himself and the 
young lady and Mrs. Metcalfe were inside it. The 
car came a week ago. I didn’t know they were ex- 
pected so soon.” 

The news and encounter gave Denys a restless 
pillow for many hours, although he ought to have 
been tired enough from the journey to sleep soundly. 
The birds had begun their low sleepy whistles and 
calls before his eyes closed at last. He had lain 
with his face turned toward Castle Clogher rejoic- 
ing that she was there, anticipating, now with rap- 
tures of delight, again with fear, the vision of her 
that must come to him within the next few hours; 
wanting to fly towards the meeting, counting the 
leaden hours again feeling that he had no courage 


“OH, IS IT YOU , MY OWN LOVEr 241 


to meet her and look upon her. He wondered if 
the time of absence had changed her. It was 
eighteen months since they had met. A sudden fierce 
jealousy wakened in him of all the men she had met 
during those eighteen months. He believed that 
few men could pass Dawn Finucane without being 
taken with her beauty and charm. Had anyone 
supplanted him? At last the tossing and turning 
and troublesome thoughts ceased, and he slept 
quietly. 

He had forgotten to ask about the Dowager oddly 
enough, and his father said nothing. He heard at 
the breakfast table that she was dead. Patrick Fitz- 
maurice was sure he had written the news to his son, 
and it had appeared in all the papers. She had left 
a tidy bit of money too, the people were saying, and 
it was all for Miss Dawn. 

While they were still at the breakfast-table a mes- 
senger came with a characteristic note from Lord 
Lenane. 

My Dear Denys — I don’t know if you are there 
or where you are. What the devil do you mean by 
dropping out of the world these six weeks past? You 
are a nice sort of a fellow to be acting as my agent. 
You have heard of my poor mother’s death. She 
was herself to the last and we took her out of Rome 
some weeks ago because she insisted that it was no 
place for an Irish Protestant to die in. I could not 
be sure whether there was not some humor in her 
saying it, for she was not a narrow-minded woman. 
She sleeps in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome near 
your friend, John Keats. 

We are all delighted to get home. We ought to 
have been back for the sickness, but my mother lived 
from day to day. You seem to have done everything 
for the people, returning evil for good — eh? Now 
that the fine weather is coming or come, we had 


242 “OH, IS IT YOU, MY OWN LOVE?” 


better get back to the reclamation, if you still stand 
by it. 

Come to lunch if you get this. We’ve heard a 
cock-and-bull story of your going off to nurse some 
other sick people, as though you hadn’t enough of 
your own. Besides, I didn’t engage you for a sick- 
nurse. 

Come as early as you can before lunch, and we’ll 
walk over and see what damage was done to the 
plant. 

Ever yours, 

Leenane. 

Denys set off as soon as he had smoked a morn- 
ing pipe with his father. The little spaniel he had 
picked up in the Island and called Flora followed 
at his heels like Rory, who showed a great tolerence 
of the new arrival. He was at Castle Clogher by 
eleven o’clock. 

Lord Leenane was in the room he called his of- 
fice, and Denys found him there, unannounced. Lord 
Leenane sprang up when he discovered who his visi- 
tor was and shook Denys warmly by the hand. 

“Now, why the devil haven’t you written to me?” 
he began. 

“I’ve been nursing typhus patients on Carra 
Island.” 

“Clear of infection — eh?” 

“I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. I’ve been 
quarantined for six weeks.” 

“Let me see. I’ve written to you a dozen times 
during the last eight weeks and the divil a word 
could I get from you.” 

“I couldn’t write, of course, till I was free of in- 
fection. We were cut off from the world. I was in 
hospital before that.” 

“Yes, I remember. What happened you? The 


“ 0 H y IS IT YOU , MY OWN LOFEr 243 

person who wrote for you said you had got hurt, — 
your nurse, I think. What happened to you ?” 

“This.” 

Denys bent his head and ruffled his hair lightly. 
The mark of the stone was still plainly visible. 

“That was a narrow thing! How did it come?” 

“An irresponsible person named Geraghty who 
had been indulging too freely avenged the wrongs 
of the people with a sharply pointed stone. I be- 
lieve he or someone else kicked me when I was down. 
My mouth was cut and I had a good many bruises.” 

“Good God! You never told me! Was the fel- 
low prosecuted?” 

“I’d no time to think of prosecution. Besides, 
there was no malice. It was the drink. When I 
was well enough to get about, the fever had broken 
out at Carra. I wrote to you just before that, ex- 
plaining that there was a boycott on and the people 
were unfriendly. I had to leave it to other people 
to feed them. The feeling was too strong against 
me. I believe they thought I was accountable for 
the evils that befell them. They didn’t understand 
that I was trying to save them from depending on 
the potato for food. They traced everything to St. 
Senan’s Well running dry, and they got it into their 
heads that my drainage-works had something to do 
with it.” 

“Ah — ! the Well had run dry. I remember the 
tradition. People said it never had run dry and 
never would.” 

“One of the officers who was blown up in the 
camp last summer, — he was nursed by good little 
Nurse Malone who wrote you for me, in this very 
house — thought the explosion had something to do 
with it. It had altered the flow or stopped it in 
some way. When I saw it last it was as dry as my 
hand.” 


244 “OH, IS IT YOU , MY OWN LOVEr 


“The water may have come back or may come 
back. That would ‘queer’ the boycott, — would it 
not?” 

“I think the boycott is over. As I came through 
the village the people who met me gave me the time 
of day, sheepishly, and the children dipped to me. 
My father says that Father Tyrrell preached some 
very strong sermons. I wonder they listened to him.” 

All the time he was listening for Dawn’s foot- 
steps, for her voice in the silence of the house. 

“Sit down, Denys, you’re looking peakish,” said 
Lord Leenane kindly. “That’s a nice bit of dog- 
flesh you have. Where did you pick her up?” 

Before Denys could answer Dawn came into the 
room. The eighteen months had made a great 
change in her. She had grown to full effulgence of 
beauty. Perhaps the Italian suns were responsible 
for the touch of gold that had come to her com- 
plexion and the deep hues as of ripe corn in hair 
that had been paler. Her eyes were as blue as corn- 
flowers, Denys thought, dazzled by so much beauty : 
and how kind they were ! 

“Oh, Denys,” she said, “we have been hearing, 
Aunt Sophie and I, of all you suffered, and how un- 
just it all was. You have been splendid, Denys; 
and the people are very sorry now. Geraghty came 
out and cried as we went through the village. He 
said you were his best friend, and that it w T as the 
drink and not he that did it. I’m afraid he was not 
altogether sober but he said he was going to take 
the pledge next week. Then we met Father Tyrrell 
and he said they would go back to work and work 
for less wages till they had made up what damage 
they did. 

“H’m ! I am glad they’ve come to their senses,” 
said Leenane grimly. “They’ll have to do a lot to 


“OH, IS IT YOU, MY OWN LOVE?” 245 


undo what they did. See here, Dawn, — your friend 
Geraghty did this , — he nearly killed Denys.” 

Denys drew back shyly, but, with an odd, tender 
manner as though he were a son, Lord Leenane 
parted Denys’s hair to show the scar. 

“Oh, poor Denys!” said Dawn drawing near, 
with soft eyes of pity. Her breath was on Denys’s 
cheek; he smelt the sweetness of her hair. 

“This fellow hadn’t had enough punishment,” 
said Leenane, with a manner grimly affectionate, 
but he must go off to nurse typhus patients on Carra. 
Luckily, he didn’t get it himself.” 

“Oh, how splendid, Denys!” said Dawn, with an 
intoxicating homage as she looked at him over her 
clasped hands. 

It occurred to him that she had never looked as 
beautiful as in the sombre blackness of the garments 
she was wearing. Round her neck was a string of 
milky pearls, and little hoops of pearls dangled at 
her ears. She had a curious stateliness for so young 
a girl. Dawn had suddenly grown up. 

“I suppose they’ve forgotten all that nonsense 
about St. Senan’s Well?” said Leenane. 

“Oh, no,” said Dawn. “It was just that con- 
vinced them they were wrong. The water came 
back. There was something like an earthquake 
shock here in the late autumn. You remember the 
time of the bog-slide. The papers gave a full ac- 
count of it. Afterwards the water came back to 
the Well.” 

“Robin Thierry thought it would,” said Denys. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

A LAST PARTING 

M RS. Arundel had sent for Denys to come to see 
her. The letter was written by Mary Arun- 
del, Hilary’s sister. 

“She is very ill,” she wrote, “but she will not lie 
down like anyone else. She will be dressed and sit 
up in her chair. The doctors say that it is best to 
humor her. You will be horrified at the change in 
her. She desires urgently to see you. Come quickly, 
lest it should be too late.” 

The urgent summons sent Denys flying off to Eng- 
land. Mrs. Arundel was at Homewood. He hur- 
ried through, hardly stopping for a meal, grieved 
to the heart by the knowledge that Rachel Arundel 
was dying. He remembered that someone had said 
that she was a woman never to be forgotten by those 
who knew her. He had hardly estimated the 
strength of his admiration and pity for this noble 
woman till now, when he knew she was dying. 

Mary Arundel came to him in the stately drawing- 
room he remembered, with the long windows look- 
ing out over velvet lawns on a beautiful view of the 
South Downs stretching away to Brighton and the 
sea. He was standing by the windows when she 
came in, and she crossed the wide stretch of polished 
floor to him with a swiftness unlike the slow move- 
ment he remembered in her. 

“Oh, you are good to come,” she said. “She 
wants to see you. Do you know she has sent away 
Hilary? She would not let him stay to see her die. 
It is unjust to Hilary, but what can one say to a dy- 
ing woman? My brother is not a child. Why you 
246 


A LAST PARTING 


247 

and me and not him? It is unjust to him, and the 
poor boy is miserable.” 

“He has consented to be banished?” asked Denys, 
with a hardening of his young face. 

“What can one do — with a dying woman?” 

Behind her eager defence of her brother Denys 
discovered something amiss and was sorry for this 
passionately devoted sister. 

“But she will change her mind? She will see 
him? He will remain within call?” 

Mary Arundel’s face turned a deep ashamed red. 

“She has banished him; she has forbidden him to 
come back until she is dead. She has sent him away 
. . . to friends . . . to be comforted. You 

must not misjudge my brother. There is no quarrel, 
— no coldness. He has always been devoted to her; 
he is devoted still. In a sense she dominates him. 
She could not bear to see him suffer.” 

“I should send for him,” said Denys decisively. 
“His absence will be misunderstood. It is unfair 
to both of them. He should be here.” 

“If he will not come?” 

“I think I should make him come.” 

He felt profoundly sorry for the girl who was 
evidently so unhappy. Plain to see she was suffering. 

“You might make him see how people will regard 
his absence,” she said, as one who clutches at a 
straw. 

“I?” 

“Men will listen to one another. He would never 
have gone of his own free will. When she told him 
to go, perhaps ... he was glad. He has never 
seen death. The doctors say she may last some 
days. On the other hand a movement might end it. 
Her heart is barely going.” 

“Where is he?” 

“He is with the Bartons. Dr. Barton died three 


24S 


A LAST PARTING 


months ago. Margery and her mother are at a 
little house at Ockley, near Dorking, which my sis- 
ter-in-law gave them. There is a train from here at 
12:30.” 

“I can see her first.” He had looked at his watch 
and found it was 1 1 :35- He had been early in com- 
ing down. 

“There is one back at 2 130.” 

An eager look had sprung up in her face. 

“I shall bring him,” he said with confidence, 
answering the begging in her eyes and hoping his 
face revealed nothing of his feeling towards her 
idol. 

“After you have seen her there will be time for 
some lunch. You must be hungry.” 

“Thank you,” he said. “I had breakfast at seven.” 

He went upstairs tip-toe to the wide airy room 
where Rachel Arundel lay on her raised pillows, 
drawing difficult breaths. The room was a beauti- 
ful one, giving impression of light and space; not 
much furniture, but what there was of it was 
beautiful. The windows were open towards the 
wonderful view and the room was full of flowers 
and smelling almost like a new watered greenhouse. 

She put out a hand, which she seemed hardly capa- 
ble of lifting, to him, and he took it and kissed it. He 
noticed how much it had wasted. The rings he re- 
membered were no longer there; the shrunken fin- 
gers would hardly have held them. 

“Sit down . . . near me,” she said. 

He drew a chair to the bedside. Mary Arundel 
had gone out, closing the door behind her. They 
were alone, save for her little dog, that lay on the 
satin coverlet and regarded him with watchful eyes, 
his little body shaken now and then with a deep sigh. 

“It was . . . very good of you ... to 
come,” she said. “And ... so quickly ... I 


A LAST PARTING 


249 


was afraid . . . there might not be time . . . 

I sent for you . . . chiefly ... to ask you 

... to stand by . . . Hilary. People will mis- 
judge him . . . they have misjudged our mar- 
riage. . . It was . . . my doing . . . the only 

way ... I could give him . . . him ... all I 
wanted ... to give. It has not been ... a mar- 
riage . . . really. ... I still . . . look upon my- 
self . . . as Simon’s wife ... I have left it 
... in my will . . . that I am to be . . . 

buried with him. ... I am glad ... I did not 
live long enough to . . . wear those poor children 
out. ... It was the only way. Promise me . . . 
you will . . . stand by Hilary!” 

“Mrs. Aarons . . .” 

He saw a faint smile flicker over the dying wom- 
an’s face. He went on hurriedly: “You have done 
wrong in sending Captain Arundel away from you. 
What will people think of his turning his back upon 
his benefactress at such a time?” 

She lifted her hand for silence. 

“He would have . . . hated ... to see me 
die,” she said. 

“I believe he is better than that,” Denys answered 
on a sudden impulse. He did not believe in his heart 
that Hilary Arundel was better than that. What 
did they see in him, those women — Rachel Aarons, 
Margery Barton, Dawn, Mary Arundel? How 
many a man has asked the question about another 
man and found no answer to it. “He is better than 
that. You must not make him look like a coward 
and an ingrate before the world. No man’s stand- 
ing by him could redeem him from that.” 

Fear leaped into the suffering face and his heart 
smote him. 

“I see . . . you are right,” she panted. “It 


250 


A LAST PARTING 


would be worse . . . for him. I only thought 

to . . . save him.” 

“He will be here in a few hours. I am going for 
him.” 

A brightness flashed into her face. Remember- 
ing it afterwards Denys realized what heights and 
depths of self-abnegation there may be in a woman’s 
love. 

There was no time for more and Mrs. Arundel 
was plainly exhausted. He lifted her hand and 
kissed it before going out of the room to look for 
the trained nurse who was in charge, whom he 
found in the corridor, waiting patiently. 

“Keep her alive till the afternoon,” he said; “I 
am going for Captain Arundel.” 

“I will do my best,” the nurse replied, some 
warmth coming to her cold and weary face. “He 
should not have left her.” 

He had known before Mary Arundel told him, 
shame-facedly, where he should look for her brother. 

At Ockley he was directed by a grassy road which 
ran through woods to Mrs. Barton’s house. The 
woods were carpeted with primroses. It was a 
beautiful fresh day with all the birds singing, and 
Leith Hill in blue haze above the beautiful village. 
The road through the woods was delightful enough 
to tempt anyone to linger, and the day was unseason- 
ably hot, although with a nip of east wind in it. But 
he had not time for loitering. He counted that there 
would be just time to catch the 2 130 back, if there 
was no hindrance, if he should find Hilary Arundel 
at Lee Hatch, Mrs. Barton’s house. The next train 
was at 4:36. There was no time to be lost if 
Hilary Arundel was not to be disgraced, if Rachel 
Arundel was not to die without the presence of the 
man who owed her so much duty and affection. It 
was of the brightness on the dying face that Denys 


A LAST PARTING 


251 


was thinking, as he strode through the wood, look- 
ing out for the landmarks that had been given him, 
the house with the pigeon-cote on the lawn by 
which he was to turn to the left, the white gate, the 
little avenue up-hill. He was thinking of Mary 
Arundel — a fine, brave, devoted creature, as he 
walked, not of Hilary Arundel nor of Margery Bar- 
ton. His thoughts were hard there. They were 
going to be married, enriched by the woman who 
was left to die alone. He felt quite capable of tak- 
ing Hilary Arundel by the coat collar and dragging 
him with him, if he were not ready to come. 

He had passed the house with the pigeon-cote and 
the white gate, the little avenue up-hill, the cottage 
with the pond in front of it, and had crossed by 
the bridge and the wall letter-box, and suddenly 
there was a door between high privet hedges, with 
three steps up to it, a green garden door, beyond 
which he heard a familiar laugh. The latched door 
yielded to a touch. He looked through a pergola, 
bare now, to a red house wall. Between where the 
pergola ended and the house began, he saw a green 
lawn with hyacinths growing in beds cut in the 
turf. A fox-terrier came and barked at him. Two 
pairs of eyes were regarding him, one pair defiant 
almost, or at least defensive, the other ashamed. 
Captain Arundel had been helping to tie up the 
climbing rose-trees. He still held a ball of raffia in 
his hand. Miss Barton had a little basket and scis- 
sors which she put down on a seat beside her as she 
turned to meet the intruder. 

All of a sudden Denys’s wrath died down before 
the miserable guilt in Hilary Arundel’s expression. 
The laugh he had heard had infuriated him, but the 
man before him did not look a happy man. 

“Have you come to tell me she is dead?” he asked, 
and as the color ebbed away, his fair complexion 


252 A LAST PARTING 

became pinched and blue, as though he was very 
cold. 

“He would never have left her, only she insisted,” 
Margery Barton said with an heightened color, 
looking as though she would step between the two 
young men. 

Denys’s mood turned dreary and cold. 

The visions again. It was as though he could see 
into the man before him, could feel with his trem- 
bling heart and fear with him. The girl, he said to 
himself, was the better man of the two; she would 
fight for what belonged to her. 

“She is not dead,” he said, with a chilly gentle- 
ness. “You will be in time. She should not have 
sent you away. Her magnanimity overshot the 
mark. What would be said of you if you left her 
to die alone? Can you come at once? We can just 
catch the return train if you do not delay.” 

Arundel turned helplessly to the girl. 

“You know I hated leaving her,” he said. 

“Yes, yes, I know. She sent you to me for com- 
fort. There never was anyone like her. But, Mr. 
Fitzmaurice is right, though I do not acknowledge 
his right to interfere.” She flung a last glance of 
defiance at Denys, and turned to Arundel. “Go, my 
dear,” she said in soft command. 

In his heart Denys knew that Hilary Arundel was 
afraid of the death-bed; he knew that the dying 
woman knew it; that Margery Barton knew it. 

Well, his secret was safe with the three of them. 
Perhaps he could not help it. 


CHAPTER XXIX 

DAWN GIVES COMFORT 


A FEW days later Denys was on his way home. 

He had saved Hilary Arundel from himself. 
Some of his judgments he had revised. The dandy 
and the fop had disappeared when Hilary Arundel 
cried like a child beside the dying bed of the woman 
who bore his name, when her dying hand had gone 
out weakly to stroke his hair. He had been incon- 
solable, like a child, when she was dead. Looking 
at the miserable eyes and the sullen haggardness of 
the boyish face, Denys recognized that he had been 
too severe a judge. More, with the inner vision, he 
knew that the great-souled and gracious woman who 
had passed away had drawn out of Hilary Arundel 
the best that he was capable of giving. She had 
written her name upon his life and character. Per- 
haps, — she would save him yet. Perhaps, — it was 
the childishness in him that drew the love of women. 

He thought he was little likely ever to see Hilary 
Arundel again. He parted with him with no regret. 
It was otherwise with Mary Arundel, who was tak- 
ing her brother to Italy for three months. Denys 
appreciated the fact that he was not to be allowed 
to go straight from his wife’s death-bed to the com- 
fort of Margery Barton. She had said good-bye to 
Denys with obvious regret, walking with him by a 
quiet wood path to the stile where the car would 
pick him up. While they waited she said the words 
which Denys felt she had maneuvered to say, when 
she suggested the walk through the woods, instead 
of the car coming in the usual way. 

“I can never thank you enough, Mr. Fitzmaurice, 
253 


254 


DAWN GIVES COMFORT 


for all you did for us,” she said. “Don’t think ill 
of Hilary. I think this has done great things for 
his character. He was a nervous child and he was 
frightened by a nurse when he was little. She took 
him to see someone who was dead, and lifted him 
to kiss the dead face. It gave him a great terror 
of death. I think that has gone by forever.” 

The car was in sight. They shook hands warmly 
and parted. Looking back from the bend of the 
road Denys saw her still watching him. 

“A fine creature,” he said to himself. “She will 
be a corrective to that child’s worship of him and 
desire to give him all he asks. She will keep alive 
the soul which Rachel Aarons awakened in him.” 

He had waited for the reading of the will in 
which he was told he was interested. 

“I, Rachel Aarons,” the will began “Arundel” was 
— written in brackets. 

She had provided splendidly for Hilary Arundel. 
After a number of bequests to friends and servants 
came this clause: 

“I leave a thousand pounds to Denys Fitzmaurice, 
who negotiated for me the purchase of the Erris 
Estate, County Mayo, Ireland, containing some- 
where about fifty thousand acres, and on the sale of 
the estate, whether in whole or in part, he shall re- 
ceive ten per cent of the purchase money.” 

“Not much in that,” said the grey-whiskered man 
who had read the will to Denys, congratulating him 
on his thousand-pounds’ legacy — “bog and moun- 
tain, isn’t it?” 

“Yes,” said Denys, and his eyes were grey as 
water; “but I think the bog and mountain will make 
me a very rich man one day. I think she knew it.” 

“I desire to be buried by the side of my dear hus- 
band, Simon Aarons, in Highgate Cemetery,” was 
the last clause of the will. 


DAWN GIVES COMFORT 


2 55 


“I believe old Simon satisfied her better than the 
young man after all,” the lawyer said, locking up 
his bag, to Denys, to whom he seemed to have taken 
a fancy. “Extraordinary the foolish things women 
will do. The young man shows very proper feeling. 
It might not have worked out as well if she had lived 
longer.” 

“She knew she had a very short time to live,” 
said Denys. “It was the only way to provide for 
Captain Arundel, for whom she had a great affec- 
tion. It was a nominal marriage.” 

“You astonish me. So it was a romance. Well, 
I’m glad. I confess it was a shock to me when I 
heard she was going to marry again — and a mere 
boy. I had a great admiration for her. She was 
the making of Simon.” 

“She was the noblest woman I ever knew,” said 
Denys, and left it to his listener to spread the tale. 

So Denys went home with his thousand pounds 
and his Castle in Spain which no one believed in but 
himself. There was plenty for him to do getting 
the reclamation-works started again, and setting to 
work to procure better cottages for the people than 
they lived in. His hands were so full that it ex- 
plained why he saw little of Dawn Finucane. He 
was at the Murrough Farm. Time was when he had 
been at the beck and call of Castle Clogher. Now, 
though he was often there on business with Lord 
Leenane, he was usually too tired at night to dine 
out. There was so much to do to make good the 
wanton destruction of last autumn and the havoc 
wrought by the winter storms. The people were 
thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Geraghty had 
taken the pledge, a thing so surprising that it made 
other people, some of whom did not need it but only 
took it by way of precaution, follow his example. 


256 DAWN GIVES COMFORT 

Lord Leenane had smiled over Denys’s Castle in 
Spain. 

“He’ll never see a penny of that ten per cent,” 
he said. “What Ulster has Ulster holds; she 
doesn’t share anything. Denys, when I tell him to 
expect nothing, gets the queer look in his eyes that 
he had that day long ago when he looked at the 
Little Bog and and saw it fair pasture. He’s a sen- 
sible lad as a rule, but he has a queer streak in him. 
I wonder how he persuaded that woman — a Jewess 
too, with the gift for finance of her race, — to be- 
lieve in his dreams?” 

“I think Denys sees further than any of us,” said 
Dawn, to whom he spoke. 

Then she said: 

“By the way, we owe Denys a good deal, don’t 
we, father? He bought those Raeburns.” 

“Denys is too much of a gentleman to profit by 
a blunder like that. He would not hear of touch- 
ing the money beyond what he had paid. He is a 
man of honor. 

Dawn still looked dissatisfied. 

“A good many people would think we ought not 
to be made rich by Denys’s sense of honor. If the 
Jew dealer had got the pictures we might have 
whistled for the money.” 

“I’d have had a fight for it.” 

Then Leenane said an odd thing. 

“Maybe you’d be giving Denys back the money 
yourself, Dawn. I said once that no one need ask 
for my girl unless he had fifty thousand pounds in his 
hand. I had known enough of what it meant to be 
keeping up a title and a big place on an empty purse.” 

Dawn said nothing, only went and looked out of 
the window. 

“It was the luckiest day I ever had when I found 
Denys the Dreamer sitting on the bank overlooking 


DAWN GIVES COMFORT 


257 


the Little Bog and his eyes grey as water. Things 
have gone well with us since then. We were up to 
our necks then, Dawn, up to our necks. And Maur- 
ice gone from me, and I seeing no way out of the 
trouble.’’ 

Still Dawn never said a word. 

There came a day when the sea-fog creeping in 
over the land blotted out the plain and hill. The 
damp chill pierced to the bone. Only the hardiest 
of the blackbirds still sang. At Castle Clogher Mrs. 
Metcalfe sat over the fire with a novel. Leenane 
was in Galway for some meeting or other. 

The smoke of the fog blew into the room and 
damped even the fire. When Dawn came in hatted 
and rain-coated, Mrs. Metcalfe stared. 

“You are not going out, Dawn?” 

“Yes, I am going out. The dogs will not hear 
of my staying in.” 

“You’ll get wet.” 

“I can change.” 

“Oh well, 1 daresay it will do you good. Don’t 
go on to the bogs; you might get into a soft place 
before you knew where you were going in this fog.” 

“I’ll keep to the road.” 

She went half-way to the door and came back. 

“You remember Denys’s Nurse Malone, dear?” 
she said. 

“Yes; what of her?” 

“She’s dead of the typhus. I’ve just heard. The 
people are saying she will be the last to die of it. 
They think she always wanted to offer herself for 
them.” 

“How grieved Denys will be!” 

“Yes; I wonder if he has heard.” 

She started off through the mist, four rejoicing 
dogs leaping and barking about her. Her father 
had said that Denys had been melancholy of late. 


258 


DAWN GIVES COMFORT 


He had told her about Nurse Malone and she had 
gathered what he did not tell, poor Nurse Malone’s 
romance. 

“I hope her Dr. Roger and his Alice will never 
forget her,” she said to herself as she took her way 
through the fog towards the Murrough Farm. 
Momentarily it thickened. It was smoke-colored 
now, with a hint of indigo-blue behind it, the wall 
of fog pressing in from sea and sending its messen- 
gers before it. 

It seemed a strange lost world in the fog. It 
began to be very wet. The sheep bleated close by 
her and there came the answer of the lamb, and she 
could not see them. A cow lowed. It was as though 
the creatures were lost in the fog. The dogs kept 
close to her skirt. She looked down but could not 
see the solid earth while her feet felt for it. 

She was not afraid. She had been accustomed to 
say that she knew every inch of the bog, so she kept 
on, her hands in her muff, her feet feeling for the 
solid road; now and again she felt grass under them 
and drew back. She had to trust her feet. All 
around her were the melancholy sounds the animals 
were making. A bell boomed from somewhere with 
a ghostly air. She could not have told from what 
direction it came, or if it was a bell at all. 

The dogs were keeping so close to her that they 
impeded her progress. They were frightened, poor 
things, and their coats were wet with the dripping 
fog that hung on her curls and her eyelashes. She 
stooped and spoke to them by name. Encouraged 
they bounded on before her, and suddenly Monk 
barked. 

Someone loomed out of the mist — like a tree 
walking — Denys. 

“You!” he said, and took her hands, warm 
from her muff, into his own cold and wet ones. 


DAWN GIVES COMFORT 


259 


“What do you mean by being out in such weather?” 

“What do you?” she asked with a queer sense of 
exhilaration. It had been lonely in the fog with all 
those children, as she called the dogs, depending on 
her and frightened. 

“I am glad to meet you, Denys,” she went on. 
“The fog was getting a bit thick, as the Londoners 
say. I suppose you are lost too. It makes all the 
difference in the world when two are lost instead 
of one.” 

“You feel that,” he said. “Would it be the same 
if it was anyone else? Hilary Arundel?” 

“Poor creature! Why do you talk of him?” 

The chilly disdain made him say to himself that 
he would have to defend his old rival against her, 
but not now — the moment was precious. 

“Do you know what I was doing, Dawn?” he 
said. “I was crying. I am glad you did not see me 
crying.” 

“I know,” she said. “It was for Nurse Malone. 
I cried too. I was coming to you to comfort you.” 

“She died for them — that they might have their 
happiness,” he said brokenly; and suddenly he lifted 
her hand and laid it against his eyes. Suddenly 
something warm reached her through the cold damp 
of his face. She put up her arms and drew his head 
down to her. He had had dreams of how tender 
she could be. 

“My poor Denys,” she said. “She is of the 
Noble Army of Martyrs. Be comforted , — my 
Denys !” 

THE END 


printed by BENZIGRR BROTHERS, NRW YORK 
























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